


Set My Soul On Fire

by Acadjonne



Series: Set My Soul On Fire [1]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Mutants, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, And more characters are introduced, Assault, Attempted Rape, Blurryface, Brendon Urie acts like a child when faced with a mysterious dog, Brendon doesn't know his limits, Bronx just thinks everything is cool, Bronx saves the day tbh, Currently being rewritten - Freeform, Dallon is a good bro, Discussion of mutant slang, Discussion of stillbirth, Drugging, Everyone is a mutant, Fic Under Construction, Frank Iero has the immune system of a wet paper doll, Frank and Gee don't fucking talk to each other about anything jfc, Gen, God bless Mikey Way, Guilt, Hey look locational diversity!, Hiatus, I have nothing against Darla Taylor oops, Josh Dun gets Blurry to help him dye his hair, Josh Ramsay's Pets, Josh gets sick, M/M, Mafia (party game), Mentions of Death, Mentions of doppelgangers, Mikeyway calls them idiots, Misplaced Guilt, More tags to be added, Nancy Grace is a bitch, Nightmares, Or In Which Acadjonne Invents Words For No Reason, Or how to control his powers, Pete tries to propose, Poor Josh Ramsay, Recurring Nightmares, Stillbirth, Strangulation, Super Smash(ed) Brothers, Threats, Tyler represses like a motherhugger, Umbilical cords, Wonb Twins Survivors, admitting to feelings, also tyler "electricity and stuff", dont hurt me for what happens to ray, excessive use of curse words, hey we have VI0IV in here now too not just DCD2, i'm too broke to put an actual mafia into my fic, im sorry, joe's description of his powers tho, josh ramsay describes acoustickinesis as generally screeching bless, misusing my knowlegde of marianas trench lyrics to write dialogue oops, there's also a dash of sassy Beebo, unhealthy coping methods, why do i write josh ramsay as such a sassy shit jfc, womb twins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 21:45:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9923447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acadjonne/pseuds/Acadjonne
Summary: Josh Dun is a mutant.Since before he was born, there were signs pointing to him having extraordinary abilities, but after suffering his first panic attack in his early teens, he begins to struggle with not only his growing social anxiety, but also how to control his powers; the ability to create and manipulate fire.After accidentally outing himself as a mutant, Josh finds himself in a tough situation; away from home, with no money, no transportation, and no one to turn to. Enter Patrick Stump, a fellow mutant, who takes Josh to a safe place where he can be himself without fear.Now if only Josh could figure out why that Tyler kept staring at him.





	1. Burning Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PastelMess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelMess/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Light a Match and All I'll See is You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4175058) by [PastelMess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelMess/pseuds/PastelMess). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man. Where do I begin?
> 
> For anyone who's read Light a Match and All I'll See is You by PastelMess, yes, I have read it, and yes, this is inspired by it. I've spoken with PastelMess and she knows all about this fic and the series it will (hopefully) be a part of, knows my general plot outline and a bunch of other details. She's really interested in this idea, actually, so.
> 
> This spiraled way out of control. It was initially meant to be the first work in a series, which you'll notice it is still listed as, because I may write other works that into this universe later on. This was supposed to be a few thousand words, maybe 10k at most. It's grown to be much longer than that. At the time of posting this first chapter, this work will have been just under twenty four thousand words, five chapters, and not yet completed.
> 
> I'd like to thank PastelMess for helping me with this, allowing me to bounce ideas around and generally being there whenever I had something stupid to ask regarding this AU. Thanks to my irl friends for reading through the earliest draft of this back during exam week last month, and helping me with some of the ideas. You're both awesome and definitely part of the reason I didn't give up within a week. Thanks as well to Edy and Marsakat, who both expressed interest about this AU on Tumblr, because you're both amazing authors and I love your works. I hope you like mine as well.
> 
> Fic title from Ode To Sleep by Twenty One Pilots.
> 
> Chapter title from Burning Up by Marianas Trench.

If you asked anyone who knew Josh Dun to describe him in one word, the one you’d be most likely to hear would be “warm.”

Josh was a warm person in general. Despite his anxiety, he tried his best to make others happy, and often had a smile on his face himself. If he could help someone, he’d be sure to do so, and if he couldn’t, he’d try to find them someone who could.  He’d kept his mother warm while she was pregnant with him, brought warmth into his parents’ lives when he was born. He’d kept younger his siblings warm on long, cold nights when nightmare seemed to be everywhere around them. During the winter, playing outside with his childhood friends, he’d been the one they’d clung to when soaked through from snowball fights and shivering in the cold air. He seemed to radiate warmth, always had, not that anyone ever complained, though Josh’s mother found his higher-than-average body temperature and apparent immunity to fevers a bit odd. No one ever questioned it, however.

And then Josh burst into flames for the first time.

* * *

 

The manifestation of Josh’s pyrokinesis happens at his sister Ashley’s birthday party. She’s turning 11; Josh is 12, just about to turn 13, and his mother suspects he may have some form of anxiety.

From a young age, Josh had not liked being too far from anyone he knew. He’d thrown a tantrum on his first day of school, trying to keep his mother from leaving, and he’d never been one to play with the neighbourhood kids unless at least one of his siblings could play too. He didn’t have many friends, and wasn’t good at making them. School was a bit hard for Josh as well; he didn’t like speaking in front of groups, or to groups, or in groups. Josh didn’t like groups in general.

A birthday party for his little sister was something he was willing to go through, except for the fact that children and adults seemed to multiply every time he blinked. He didn’t really know any of the kids running around playing party games with Ashley, and politely declined any offers to join whatever it was they were doing. What he really wanted was to leave the room, maybe get some air, but he didn’t want Ashley to be upset if she noticed he was missing. In hindsight, he’d regret not going outside like he felt he should.

His mother noticed what was happening before anyone else, including Josh. As the group of children settle a bit too close, talked a bit too loud, tried to include Josh, he grew more and more flushed. A few kids moved away from him, thinking that by some fluke the heater behind Josh may actually have been on. Like a saint, Laura Dun swooped in, gracefully leading her oldest son out of the situation and up to his bedroom. By then, he was already beginning to hyperventilate.

Laura approached Josh, but even from a few feet away, she could feel the heat radiating off of him. It was like he was a wood stove, fire burning hot within, heating the room and possibly a bit outside of it from the intensity. Worried, she tried to feel his forehead for a fever, but Josh jerked back from her approaching hand, and she relented.

“Breathe, Joshua,” she said soothingly, “you need to breathe.” It hurt to see her son like this. He was shaking like a leaf, and sweating, as well as the hyperventilating. His face was bright red like a feverish child, and he had a hand in front of his mouth. Laura reached over and grabbed his little waste basket from beside his desk. As Josh reached for it with shaking hands, something caught the attention of both himself and his mother; his hands and arms were on fire.

Laura was stock still, but Josh jumped up, stumbling back and almost falling. He opened his mouth as if to scream, but no sound came out. Tears welled up in his eyes, but were mostly evaporated before they could fall.

_ No, no, no, no, no, no _ -

“Josh, sweetie, breathe.” His mother’s voice was as steady as she could manage, and eventually the repetition helped him to breathe again. With fresh oxygen entering his lungs, his panic subsided enough for his arms and hands to put themselves out, and his temperature lowered enough for his mother to approach. Josh allowed her to take him into her arms, crying against her chest. “Hey, sweetie, it’s okay. You’re okay, Joshua. You’re okay.” Josh didn’t exactly feel okay. How could he be okay?

Josh was a mutant.

* * *

 

By the time Josh started high school, he was beginning to make progress on controlling his powers.

After they’d first manifested during Ashley’s party, the family had sat down together and discussed the matter at length. From his parents, Josh found nothing but support, which helped ease him into the mindset that, yes, he was different, but it was by no means a bad thing. His parents also told Josh’s siblings about the matter, with his permission, and did what they could to help their children understand the complexities of being a mutant. While support for mutant population was growing, there were still many people who saw them as bad, or wrong, or dangerous. In truth, most mutants were no more dangerous than the average human.

Ashley had been old enough at the time to understand most of the situation; her brother was different, in a way she thought was cool, but it was new to him and to everyone else and she couldn’t tell anyone. Jordan, being 7, didn’t quite grasp at first why he couldn’t tell his friends about Josh being a superhero, although his elation at the idea of being related to a mutant was good for Josh, struggling internally with trying to accept his powers. Four year old Abbie wasn’t quite old enough to understand much of anything the family discussed, though they tried to dumb it down for her; it was just as well. She’d lose interest soon, forget about the whole thing, and they could make sure she understood what she needed to once she was old enough to do so.

Josh’s parents were firm believers in the idea that practicing with his powers in a safe and healthy way would help Josh to better understand and control them. The basement in their home, previously unfinished, was renovated to be as fireproof as they could get it, and it became Josh’s practice space. For a while, he practiced mostly with creating fire, like he had when his powers first manifested. It took him a while to finally get the hang of, but eventually he managed. After that, he practiced transferring fire from his hand to candles, and eventually progressed to being able to light the candles directly. By the time Josh entered high school, he was constantly helping around the house with his powers, be it lighting candles for his mother (which it almost always was) or helping his father light the furnace. High school also signalled another change for Josh; his parents decided he should get a hobby.

It was a good idea, if Josh was being honest. They were trying to get him into something involving some kind of activity, like a sports team. They thought it might help him be less stressed, as well as give him something to channel his nervous energy into. In Josh’s defense, he did try a few sports, though none of them stuck. Swimming was a horrible idea which he didn’t even attempt; fire and water were not the best combination. He wasn’t quite tall enough for basketball or volleyball, and he just didn’t like soccer. He did kind of like archery, although that was more a pastime of patience and precision than of letting off energy of any kind. Eventually, Josh’s attention wavered. He found himself drawn to the drumset in the music room.

It took a bit of convincing, but eventually his parents did agree to let Josh keep a drumset in the basement. He picked up the skill fast, teaching himself to drum alongside some of his favourite songs, while he practiced more at school as well. His parents’ limitations on what music he could listen to eased up as he learned to play, possibly in part due to being tired of listening to the same songs over and over. He makes a few friends in his music class, and they discuss forming a band, but the semester ends and Josh doesn’t talk to them much after that. It’s just as well, Josh thinks. Saves them finding out their bandmate was a mutant.

* * *

 

Josh’s discovery of his ability to absorb fire is an accident.

It happens late one night, when he’d spent way too long trying to finish his English homework and came downstairs for something to eat before he went to bed. His mother had fallen asleep watching TV, curled peacefully on the couch. Three candles are lit on the coffee table a few feet away. Josh reaches over to put them out, after all, fire safety, when the flames seem to be pulled towards his outstretched fingers like dust into a vacuum. He’s aware of a barely-there noise, almost like his ears popping, and suddenly the fire’s gone. His fingers feel slightly warm, but otherwise, there’s no trace of the flames that had just been burning.

Surprised, Josh stumbles back, colliding into his dad’s recliner and promptly falling to the floor. The thump he makes is effective in waking his mother.

“Josh? Is that you?” She asks. She must not have been sleeping too deeply, her voice doesn’t have that tired edge to it.

“Yeah, I- what just happened?” The second part is directed more towards himself than his mother, because he knows she didn’t see it. He wonders how he looks, sitting on the living room floor staring down at his hands. He swears his fingers are glowing.

“Josh, honey, just breathe, okay. Can you explain what happened?” His mother’s voice is soothing, and Josh does as she asks. He takes a deep breath.

“I came down to get a snack, and you were asleep, but the candles were still lit, so I reached over to put them out but then it was like my fingers were a fire vacuum and the candles aren’t lit anymore and my fingers feel really warm and-” His mother is next to him now, rubbing a hand against his shoulder to help him calm down.

“Well, it seems to me like you’ve just found a new aspect of your powers.” His mother says gently. It reminds Josh of how she never seems shocked or upset or even surprised about his powers. He’s grateful for how supportive she is; he’s lucky to have her. “Now, c’mon, Joshua. It’s late. Why don’t you get a couple of Oreos from the pantry and then head up to bed. You have school in the morning.”

Josh does what his mother says. He take some Oreos from the open package in the pantry and eats them on his way upstairs, before laying down and trying to sleep. It takes him a while, but eventually he manages to quiet his mind enough to drift off.

* * *

 

Over the next few weeks, Josh practices a lot with this new aspect of his powers. He grows used to the extra warmth in his fingertips after absorbing the fire from one of his candles, and while he wishes he could practice absorbing bigger flames, he doesn’t really have the means to do so. Or, he doesn’t, until his mother accidentally looks away from her cooking for too long and a small fire starts in the pan of stir fried veggies. Neither Josh nor his mother notice at first, until she asks Josh to grab the leftover chicken from the night before and catches sight of the pan. It isn’t a very big fire, isn’t even the size of the pan quite yet, but it’s an oil fire, which means they can’t just douse it with water. Josh’s mother stands there for a few moments, trying to figure out the best course of action, but Josh beats her to the punch.

“I got it, mom!” Josh says as he steps up to the stove, hands already reaching out. It’s still a weird feeling, even now, when the flames disappear into Josh’s hands, leaving behind a warm feeling that quickly makes it’s way up his arms. Luckily, the food is mostly unharmed from the flames, if a bit warmer than necessary, so his mother switches it into a new pan and adds the chicken when Josh hands it to her. The warm feeling is spreading, into his chest and up to his neck, down his legs and to his toes, but Josh doesn’t think much of it.

The food finishes cooking, and Josh helps his mother out by putting it into plates and setting the table. His mother sticks her head out of the kitchen doorway and calls the family down to eat. Josh’s entire body is warm now, uncomfortably so. He wonders if this is what his siblings feel like when they get fevers, and decides to go lay down after he’s eaten. Abbie enters the kitchen first; she’d been reading in the living room. She smiles as she takes a seat at the table, and Josh blinks away dark spots. Jordan and Ashley arrive together, talking about something or other; Josh feels like the world is fading away, but it’s different than if he were having a panic attack. His mother looks worried now, and Abbie is no longer smiling. Josh thinks maybe someone screams, but it’s muted and far away. He falls to the floor as darkness overtakes his vision.

* * *

 

Josh wakes up two days later, absolutely freezing. His mother is sitting on the closed toilet seat about a foot away, looking exhausted and worried. The lights are off, and only residual light from somewhere outside illuminates the room, streaming in from the window. Josh is wearing only a pair of swim trunks he didn’t even know he owned, submerged up to his neck in ice and water. His head is pounding like a bass drum behind his eyes, and he aches all over. He briefly wonders if this is what it feels like to be hit by a car.

“Mom?” Josh chokes out. His mother’s head flies up at his voice, and she shoots towards him, cupping his cheek briefly before pulling him towards her in a bone crushing hug. She doesn’t seem to mind that Josh is sopping wet and ice cold, nor the fact that her clothes are getting rather wet from where Josh is pressed against her. One of her hands finds its way into his hair, carding through it gently, while the other rests between his shoulders.

“Don’t ever do that again, Joshua. You scared the living daylights out of everyone!” She tells him, but Josh doesn’t quite remember what she’s asking him not to do again. She explains everything to him, trying hard to keep her voice neutral and steady.

After Josh had collapsed from absorbing the cooking fire, his parents had somehow managed to drag him into the bathroom on the first floor of the house, and filled the bathtub with as cold water as they could get it. They’d also sent Jordan and Ashley down the street to a convenience store to get some bags of ice. The next two days were then a frenzy of making ice, dumping it into the bathtub to try to regulate Josh’s temperature and keep him from overheating, and doing the same thing over again. After being relayed this information, Josh’s first reaction is to apologize, but his mother tells him not to. He does promise to not do anything that stupid with his powers again, though he does continue to practice absorbing fire in the basement. He starts releasing it onto his hands and fingers whenever he absorbs it, watches it burn itself out on his fingers and hands. He realizes that this is probably why he collapsed; he absorbed too much fire too fast, and he didn’t let it out. Those two days in the ice bath was likely the fire burning itself out inside him.

* * *

 

Graduating high school is a huge deal to Josh. It signals the beginning of his life as an adult, which scares him a bit, since his only plan in life is to find a good band and drum for as long as he’s able. Luckily, his parents aren’t plotting on kicking him out right away, though they do ask him to consider taking some classes at a local college. His sights are almost fully set on music, though, so he tries to figure out how to put himself out into the music scene. He doesn’t really know where to start, though, and ends up taking a job at Guitar Center, where he can make music recommendations and oggle the drum kits. There’s a really nice one on display, bigger and better than his current setup, with little red aliens over a black background. Josh starts putting aside a little bit of money from each paycheck in the hopes of one day being able to buy it.

Josh stays at Guitar Center for 3 years. He does in fact save up enough to buy the drum kit, which he sets up in his parents’ basement so as not to disturb the other tenants in his apartment building. Josh befriends his coworker, Chris, and in turn is introduced to a bunch of bands and musicians. He bounces around a lot, mainly as a backup drummer, though he briefly joins a semi-popular band when their regular drummer decides to take a break. He quits his job to tour with them, and when their official drummer comes back seven months later, Josh goes back to bouncing.

In between bands, he spends a lot of time at his parents’ house, practicing with his drums and his powers, and he gets a lot of odd jobs in order to pay rent. He works at a dinner for a bit, until he gets picked up for a couple of months by a band whose drummer quit. Starbucks hires Josh for six months, but he quits when one of his coworkers says something blatantly mutantphobic. He doesn’t tell his manager that, though. Probably the most ridiculous of Josh’s odd jobs was when he briefly joined a carnival as a fire-breather. It would be just his luck to only work a single day for probably the only anti-mutant carnival ever. (He doesn’t tell his mother about joining the carnival and subsequently being fired, or that they’re anti-mutant, but he does admit to visiting the carnival while it was in town. He doesn’t like lying to his mother, but it was better than telling her he’d singed off his hair himself, which they both know is impossible.)

For the majority of his twenties, that’s how it goes. He works odd jobs until a band asks him to replace their drummer, and when he’s no longer needed he repeats the cycle. For the most part, he doesn’t leave Ohio with these bands, though he’s toured nearby states a few times, and has gone as far as Iowa with one band. Being so unused to being far from home, it’s a bit understandable that he’s a bit hesitant when at 28, he’s asked to tour with a halfway-famous band going cross-country to promote their newest album. Josh has never played in front of as many people as this band usually pulls to concerts, and he considers saying no, but it’s his first offer in months and the pay is pretty good too. His mother is a bit hesitant about letting him go, but he reassures her that he’ll be fine. He’s a grown man, capable of making his own decisions, and this would be a good opportunity for him. She relents, but Josh has to promise to call her at least once a week. He ends up calling her once a day, because it makes her feel better and he’s admittedly a huge momma’s boy.

* * *

 

The first part of Josh’s year long stint with a famous band touring across the US involves a lot of driving. They’d decided before Josh had been brought in to start their tour in California, because why not, and maybe they could find a label to sign them? Josh doesn’t complain, though he gets restless from spending the night in a van with six other people and not even having enough space to roll off his left side. His nose ring pushes uncomfortably against his septum where his face is pressed into his arm. It’s not an ideal sleeping position.

They reach LA four days after leaving Columbus, and thankfully have the money to stay in a motel for the night. It’s incredibly cheap, and Josh is rooming with two other guys since they could only afford two rooms, but he doesn’t mind. The couch he sleeps on is a lot more comfortable than the floor of the van.

Their first show goes relatively well, in Josh’s opinion. The audience is bigger than Josh has ever playing in front of before, which makes him nervous, and he subsequently drums harder to keep from losing control on his powers. The lead singer of the band, a girl calling herself Elle (Josh is 90% sure that isn’t her real name), tells Josh that she’s never met such an energetic drummer before, and says she and the other band members might have to consider keeping Josh with them permanently. Josh isn’t sure if she’s being completely serious or just trying to make him feel good about his abilities. There’s a lot he’s unsure of around Elle. She repeats herself a lot and he’s pretty sure she flunked out of French, but she insists on using it in almost every song.

The second show was a lot better than the first. The audience was smaller than the previous night, a lot closer to the amount of people Josh is used to, and even though he breaks one of his sticks, he doesn’t mess up too badly. He’s still really unsure about the beat in that one song Elle claims is a translation, but won’t tell him the original song. The third show, though, is the worst of Josh’s life.

He makes the mistake of looking out to the audience section before the show starts. As he finds himself on the edge of a panic attack, his brain unhelpfully supplies him with the fact that the crowd is bigger than either of the previous shows.  _ Maybe it’s even bigger than both previous shows combined!  _ His anxiety tells him, and he really wishes that part of his mind would shut up right now.

He tries to remember everything he’s learned to help ease his anxiety and panic attacks throughout the years, from his mother’s helpful breathing exercises to the coping statements his school guidance counselor had taught him. He tries to dispel some nervous energy, but to no avail, and finally, it’s time for them to go on and he feels like he might set something on fire, powers or not. He doesn’t say anything to Elle or the other band members, though, doesn’t wanna disappoint them or their many fans that are currently staring directly at the stage, which makes him feel like they're staring at him; Josh simply sits behind the drum kit, hunches over it a bit more than necessary, and concentrates on not messing up.

Three songs into the set, Josh feels like he must be radiating heat at that moment. He’s sweating, which makes it a bit harder to pound the drums, and he’s sure that guy in the fedora and glasses at the front of the crowd is staring at him.

By the fifth song, Josh has dropped his sticks several times. Billy, from behind her piano, is looking at Josh, silently asking if he’s okay. He nods back to her. He notices her signal something to Jaden, the guitarist, and Alex, the bassist. Elle remains oblivious to all of this, standing a few feet ahead of everyone and rapping in her weirdly broken not-French.

Josh doesn’t know how he survives the sixth song, a cover of a not-French song called Dekshoo that Elle  _ had _ let Josh listen to. Probably because it has a simplistic beat when transferred onto the drums. The original song used an electronic drum machine instead of an actual drummer. Before the seventh song ends, though, everything goes up in flames. Literally.

It starts with the drumstick in Josh’s right hand, which slips from his grip long enough for his fingers to light. He doesn’t notice until after he’s picked the stick back up, and it catches fire too. He tries to put it out discreetly, but drops the stick again, and before he can really comprehend, the wooden platform the drums rest on catches fire as well. He jumps away in a panic, and people begin to push at each other, some trying to leave while others move to get closer. The guy in the fedora clutches the barrier until his knuckles go white. The band dashes off the stage, Jaden taking hold of Josh’s arm in his gloved hand. Josh doesn’t know why Jaden wears gloves onstage. He doesn’t think he’s seen him without gloves. They’re not even fingerless gloves, either. Elle just claims he’s a bit odd like that, but Jaden isn’t there when she says that.

* * *

 

Everyone manages to escape the venue without serious injury. The worst of the fire consumed most of the drum kit, but it wasn’t Josh’s; it belonged to the band’s old drummer, who’d decided he trusted Josh with it while he was gone. Josh had thought the guy was brave to let someone else use his set. Now he just thinks it was stupid. The stage at the venue would need to be fixed, so the band would have to pay them back. Josh felt really bad. They also lost Alex’s bass, which made Josh feel worse, since it had been a custom. Alex was left handed.

After being dragged outside by Jaden, Josh had run off, claiming to need space to breathe. He curled into himself in an alley a block or so from the venue and tried not to have a panic attack.

_ They know,  _ part of his brain shot at him,  _ they know you’re a mutant and they’re gonna kick you out of the band you’re not really in anyways and they’re gonna leave you here with no money and no way to get back to Columbus and you’re gonna be stuck here and- _

“Are you okay?” A voice asked, light and golden, with an edge of concern. Josh shook his head, but didn’t immediately look up. Someone settled down about a foot away from him, and Josh looked up. His eyes met bright blue ones, hidden behind black glasses. A fedora casts a shadow over the man’s face.  _ The guy from the concert, _ Josh realizes, and a jolt of fear runs through him. He forces himself not to move away. The guy looks genuinely concerned, sounded sincere when he’d spoken. 

Josh looks down again.

For a while, the two of them just sit there, the guy from the concert occasionally humming or gently tapping out a beat against his thigh. Josh finds the humming nice. The guy has a soothing voice. It helps Josh stay grounded as he calms down. Once he feels calm, he looks up again. He meets the guy’s eyes, and a reassuring smile is sent his way.

“My name is Patrick,” says the guy, sounding reassuring and gentle. Josh nods.

“I’m Josh,” he murmurs back. Patrick nods too, so Josh assumes he’d been heard.

“Do you live somewhere nearby, Josh?” Patrick asks, and Josh shakes his head no. “Where do you live?”

“Columbus.” Josh answers.

“Ohio,” Patrick questions, and Josh nods once, yes. “Do you have somewhere safe to spend the night?”

Josh thinks of the band. He’s supposed to spend the night in the van again tonight, where he’ll end up pressed between Jaden’s large frame and the bench, or else Billy and Elle will have him pressed against the door. That seems unlikely to happen now, though; he’s run off on his own after a fire mysteriously broke out, originating from on or near the drum kit. They’re not stupid. At least one of them has probably already put two and two together. He doubts they’ll let him near enough the van to even get his stuff back, which sucks, because he brought all his favourite clothes, and while he was lucky to have kept his phone in his pocket tonight, his charger is also back in the van, along with a pair of gauges and Josh’s piercing cleaner. He also left his wallet behind.  _ Fuck! _

“No,” Josh says quickly, when he realizes Patrick’s probably been waiting a little bit too long for an answer.

“Do you have a way to get home? A bus ticket, or a ride back?” Patrick asks. Josh shakes his head no. He should feel uncomfortable with all the questions, but he doesn’t. Patrick is a soothing presence, and seems to only want to help Josh. Josh sincerely hopes Patrick is being genuine. Tonight has already been bad enough.

“If you want to, I can take you to a safe place for however long you need,” Patrick offers.

“I- thank you.” Josh says, nodding fervently. Patrick helps him to his feet before leading him off to a black car half a block down the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, the band Josh was playing with when Patrick found him does not exist, hence why it remained unnamed. The band members do not exist, and are all simply based off of people I had music class with last year. The song I mentioned, Dekshoo, is in fact a real song, however. It is by a band called Radio Radio, and is in a stupid dialect of French that I only understand understand because one of the guys in Radio Radio grew up in the same place I'm from. It's a cool song, though. I'd suggest looking it up if you don't mind only understanding about 17% of the lyrics.
> 
> I will try to upload the second chapter either on March 12th or 25th, depending on how much I've written by then. If I finish this by March 25th, I might upload chapters more often than once or twice a month, but as this monster work is still being written it'll likely be a once-or-twice-a-month upload schedule for me. I doubt you guys will be getting fast updates anytime soon though, since I've been getting so lost in the writing that the word count increases by thousands of words most days. Not to mention I'm constantly getting new ideas all the time, which means more being written into this story.
> 
> If you wanna talk to me about this fic, or just try to find out when I'm updating, you can find me on Tumblr at acadjonne. That's right, I have the same username there too, just without the capital at the beginning!
> 
> Thank you very much if you're still reading these notes, or even if you've just gotten to the bottom of the chapter and catch this as you're leaving a comment or a kudos. Every single person who's read this whole thing so far is amazing and awesome and I have a special place in my heart for you!


	2. From Up in Lights (To Up in Smoke)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, man.
> 
> I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get this chapter up this weekend, seeing as I'm currently on vacation in Florida. I had no idea if I'd even have wifi, let alone a decent enough connection to access AO3, and I figured my aunt would have the entire trip micromanaged down to the second so I wasn't counting on enough free time to even put this into a draft.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who read and left kudos on the first chapter. I'm glad everyone enjoyed the chapter and I hope you all enjoy this chapter as well.
> 
> Chapter title from Wildfire by Marianas Trench.

Josh continues to thank Patrick for offering him a place to stay as they maneuver the LA streets and eventually leave the city. Every time the words slip from Josh’s mouth, Patrick smiles and replies with a firm “you’re welcome.” Eventually, Josh feels he’s probably thanked Patrick too much, and goes quiet. It isn’t an awkward silence, not totally, but it isn’t exactly comfortable either. Patrick’s eyes look over to Josh, but he remains facing the road.

“Do you mind if I play some music?” Patrick asks. Josh doesn’t mind. He tells Patrick so, and Patrick reaches forward to turn on whatever CD he has in the slot. Josh recognizes the song, kind of wants to sing along, but doesn’t want to annoy Patrick, who’s mouthing along to the lyrics himself.

For a while, they just sit in the car, Patrick driving down a road that Josh is pretty sure they’ve been on for a full twenty minutes yet all he sees is the headlight trails and trees on all sides of them. At least the road they’re on is semi-paved, and well taken care of. A pothole comes up, though, one that Patrick apparently doesn’t see, since he passes right over it, jostling them both. It’s at this point that the singer on the CD messes up the lyric, and, wait-!

“Shit!” Patrick exclaims, in the same voice he’d been talking to Josh with earlier. He doesn’t resume singing, and Josh realizes the CD they’re listening to is instrumental. That must mean-

“You’re a mutant, too!” Josh exclaims, and cringes a moment later.

“Yeah,” Patrick says, and thankfully doesn’t sound offended at Josh’s outburst, “vocal assimilation, for one. I can also control others’ speech, if I want, but I don’t usually.” He explains. Josh nods. It remains quiet again for a bit, only the instrumentals as background noise. Josh wonders why Patrick doesn’t resume singing. He hopes he hasn’t made him insecure about his mutation. It’s a lot cooler than Josh’s, in the man’s own opinion.

A few minutes after Patrick had explained his mutation to Josh, they arrive in front of a large building. It looks a bit like a mansion, or an old Victorian boarding school. There has to be at least a hundred windows just on the front of the building, and it looks to be about three storeys tall. Josh gapes. Patrick chuckles.

“Welcome to mutant safe haven, designation DCD2, or Decaydance if you’ve been here for more than three years.” Patrick says, and his voice sounds a bit like that of a circus ring leader, or a 50’s horror movie trailer announcer. “Here, we take in all types of mutants with all types of powers! Teleporters, speedsters, healers, even pyrokinetics! Step right up and come on in! You’re sure to have a blast here at DCD2!”

Josh can’t help it. He laughs, loud and bright, at Patrick’s antics, and the other man gives him a moment to catch his breath before he begins to lead him inside. The entrance they take brings them into a large hall, and Patrick tells Josh that it’s up to him whether or not he removes his shoes. Josh, not wanting to awkwardly slow them down, keeps his sneakers on.

The first few rooms they pass through are empty, and Patrick takes the silence as an opportunity to explain the place to Josh a bit more. “So, like I said outside, this place is a mutant safe haven. It’s part of a network, run by a mutant somewhere in New York, and there are safe havens like this all across the States, and a few outside, too. I know of three in Canada, and there’s at least one in Mexico under the same network too. This place operates under the designation of DCD2, but most of us here still call it by it’s previous designation, Decaydance. There aren’t overly too many mutants here, despite it being such a big place. Mutants tend to bounce around from safe haven to safe haven sometimes, and other times they don’t need to stay very long, or don’t want to. We have about nine permanent residents here right now, including myself, all with fairly different powers.” Patrick led Josh into another room, where a guy with floppy hair and tattoos along his left arm was sitting, watching something on TV. He smiled when he spotted Patrick and Josh.

“Hey, Trick!” The guy said, and his eyes flicked over to Josh. “We got a newcomer?” He asked. Patrick shrugged.

“Josh, this is Brendon. Brendon, Josh.” Patrick introduced, then turning back to Brendon, “he’s here indefinitely. We haven’t really discussed that yet, but he needed a safe place to at least spend the night.” Brendon nodded at Patrick’s explanation.

“So, Josh,” Brendon began, “What’s your mutation?”

“I, uh, I can- uh, fire.” Josh said, a bit lamely. Brendon wasn’t as easy to talk to as Patrick, what with him staring at Josh while bouncing up and down from where he was seated on the couch.

“You’re pyrokinetic, then?” Josh nodded. “Cool! I’ve never met a pyrokinetic before. You’ll have to show me how your powers work before you leave!” Josh shrunk back a bit. Brendon didn’t seem to notice, or mind, as he just kept talking. “I’m a chaos magic user, myself, but not a very good one. Just the other day, I-” Patrick, wonderful, kind Patrick, thankfully cut Brendon off from where he seemed to be about to start ranting about his powers.

“Brendon, don’t overwhelm the poor guy. He’s had a long night. Now, is Pete still gone, or did he get back already?” Patrick asked. Brendon shrugged.

“Dunno, it’s Pete, and you were supposed to be at a concert tonight. He’s probably halfway to Florida just trying to waste time.” Brendon replied. “Other than you and Pete, I don’t think anyone left, though Frank might be outside in the garden again.”

“Alright, thanks, Brendon. C’mon, Josh, let’s get you settled in for the night.” Patrick began walking across the room to a different door than the one they had entered from. Josh followed, shuffling a bit awkwardly, as he still felt Brendon’s eyes on him.

“It was nice meeting you!” He called back to Josh, who just stuttered out a “you too” in response.

* * *

 

Before Josh managed to get “settled in” for the night, there were a few more mutants to meet. Thankfully, they weren’t all as energetic as Brendon.

The first of these other mutants Josh met came rushing in as Patrick led Josh into the kitchen with a promise of food and drink. From his peripheral vision, Josh saw a large blur heading towards Patrick before slamming into the man with an enthusiastic shout of “ _Lunchbox!_ ” as he finally became visible.

He was about an inch taller than Patrick, who was hugging him back despite his protests of “ _Pete, we’ve talked about this_ ,” with short dark hair, a black hoodie, and black jeans. After a few moments, he separated himself from Patrick, though he still stayed quite close to the other man.

Patrick had introduced Josh to the man, who turned out to be the Pete he’d asked Brendon about earlier, before turning to ask Pete about someone named Bronx, whom Josh would later find out was Pete’s son.

After the three of them had eaten, Patrick asked Josh if there was anything he needed before he was brought to the room he’d be sleeping in for the night. Josh was a bit hesitant, but eventually asked to borrow a phone charger. Patrick nodded, and said he’d try to find one, before Pete began to lead Josh towards the stairs.

On their way up, it was mostly quiet. Pete seemed to sense that Josh wasn’t entirely comfortable with talking at the moment, but thankfully didn’t push him to talk. As they rounded a corner towards yet another set of stairs, Pete stopped Josh and walked over to a couple of other mutants. Both were about the same height as Pete. One had a ginger beard and dark hair, with tattoos visible on his throat and down his arms. He looked rather intimidating, though his voice didn’t quite fit his image where he was talking with his companion, who had curly hair, slightly long on top but short, almost shaved, at the sides.

"Hey, Pete!" The curly haired one called, and the tattooed one turned as well.

"Hey guys," Pete said, and gestured to Josh, "we've got a newcomer here. This is Josh. Josh, meet Joe," the curly haired one, "and Andy," the tattooed one. Josh waved meekly. Andy sent him a smile, which looked at least slightly reassuring.

"Andy, is the room two doors down from yours still empty?" Pete asked, and Andy nodded once.

"Yeah, should be. No one's really been in it since you and Patrick started sharing a room." Andy responded. This answer seemed to please Pete, who nodded back to Andy and began leading Josh upstairs again.

They went down a hallway with way too many doors for Josh to count, though Josh noticed they all had little plastic plates on them. Two doors further on than the one marked _Andy H_., Pete turned the handle and led Josh inside.

The room was a bit dusty from disuse, but fairly decently sized, and perfectly suitable in Josh's opinion. It had a bed in the middle of one wall, and a large dresser next to it. On the wall opposite the door was a large window, with blackout curtains drawn across. Pete flicked on a lightswitch, allowing a better view of the room.

Across the room from the bed, in a little corner alcove of the room, was a desk with a lamp, and a shelf on the wall above it. A few feet away from the desk was a pullout door, quite obviously a closet. In the far corner of the room was a tall floor lamp, unplugged. An empty bedside table was next to the door, and Josh almost knocked into it on his way inside when Pete turned abruptly, heading back towards the door. Josh quickly moved out of his way.

“Alright,” Pete began, “bathroom’s down the hall, door’s clearly marked but there’s one on either end and a couple more on this floor and the floor downstairs. If you need anything, Andy’s two doors up, Joe’s not too far across the hall, and Frank and the Way brothers are down the other end.” Pete gestured further down the hall, in the opposite way than they’d come. “Patrick should be up soon with your stuff. Need anything before I go?” Josh shook his head. “Alright, then. Goodnight!” With that, Pete left, and Josh scrambled quickly into the room. He shut the door behind himself due to force of habit.

Alone for the first time in a while, Josh took a few moments to revel in it. He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, felt his fingers ignite. Josh let them burn for a few seconds. It had been a while since he had simply let himself do this, even if he was making sure not to set anything else on fire. This wasn’t his place, after all, and he didn’t want to be thrown out because he was careless twice in the same night.

After a few moments, he let the flames extinguish themselves, and he took a step forward. The bed had a comforter, thin but long, draping against the floor in a few places. Josh pulled it back to reveal the bedsheets. A cover, possibly a quilt, was displayed under the comforter in all it’s colourful glory, and underneath that was a set of blue bedsheets, with matching pillowcases. The sheets appeared to be clean, and didn’t smell, though with the amount of dust around the room Josh imagined it would probably be hard to tell whether or not they were clean with just a quick look. Not feeling like making a hassle by stripping and changing the bed, Josh decided to trust that they were probably clean sheets, and set off trying to get the layer of dust of as many surfaces as he could.

Josh had dusted off the dresser, headboard, and desk, and was moving the floor lamp closer to the bed when he heard a knock at the door. Setting the lamp down by the foot of the bed, he called out “Yeah, just a second!” before moving forward to open the door. Except in the next moment, someone _phased_ through it.

Josh stared a bit stupidly at the man now standing in the room with him. Taller than Josh by a good four inches, maybe five, with a medium build and chin length brown hair. He held in his arms a white towel, what appeared to be some black sweatpants, and a grey shirt, and in his hand was a phone charger that would fit Josh’s phone. He was looking at Josh, wide-eyed and apologetic, probably due to the squeak Josh had let out when he’d phased into the room to begin with.

“Shit, sorry, sorry, you’re probably not used to people phasing through walls, huh?” The guy said, and then, “Shit, sorry, again, you don’t know who I am. I’m Gerard, me and my brother Mikey are both permanent residents here, so’s our friend Frank. You’re Josh, right?”

“Yeah, I’m Josh,” he responded.

“Well, Josh,” said Gerard, “Patrick was gonna bring these up for you but he had to do a thing and I was coming up here anyway so I offered to give them to you. Figured you’d wanna take a shower either tonight or in the morning, and a nice fresh set of clothes would do you good. Hope they fit, just kinda found them lying around.” Gerard handed over the clothes and the towel. Josh wouldn’t admit it, but it was a bit of a relief. He’d been planning on showering, but was too afraid to ask for a towel, and figured he’d just put his old clothes back on afterwards. After Josh had set the linens on the bed, Gerard also handed the phone charger over.

“Thanks,” Josh said, half-mumbling.

“No problem,” Gerard responded, and turned back towards the door. For a moment it looked like he was going to phase through it again, but decided against it, turning the handle and closing it behind him. Josh waited for his footsteps to recede before he moved from his spot, finishing in placing the lamp where he’d intended to before Gerard’s arrival, then moving the bedside table next to the bed, and plugging in his phone. Somewhere between the beginning of the show and when he arrived at DCD2, the battery had died, though he hadn’t charged it for about three days, so it was bound to happen. Once Josh was sure his phone was charging properly, he peeked his head out the door, making sure no one was coming, and began his quest to find an empty shower.

* * *

 

When Josh got out of the shower, he was a mixed bag of feelings. Part of him felt better; being under the spray of boiling water was relaxing, and it felt good to have had a proper shower, since the last time he’d had one was the first night of shows in LA. His hair had been stupidly greasy, and it was also nice to wash it, though it was kind of strange to watch some of the yellow from the dye wash down the drain. No matter how many times he’d dye his hair crazy colours, that was always the worst part.

His mood shifted down a bit when he noticed how much the dye had stained the white towel he’d been given, and while it wasn’t as noticeable as some of the other colours Josh had ever dyed his hair, he still felt bad. He didn’t dry his hair off as well as he should have, either, and drops of yellow-tinged water soaked the shoulders of the grey shirt, though those stains would be barely noticeable, if at all.

Upon entering his room, he picked up his phone only to noticed all the notifications he’d gotten since he’d last checked it. There had to have been over a hundred texts from the different members of the band, and at least two dozen calls only from Elle. Josh also noticed how late it was when he unlocked his phone; it was past one am by then.

He went through all the texts first. A few were from friends back in Columbus, or old bandmates, wishing him luck before the show. The rest were all the band he’d been playing with, asking where he was and what had happened, though eventually those from Alex, Jaden, and Billy turned angry. Elle’s remained neutral but prescient, demanding he pick up the phone. The calls were all from Elle, two dozen or more, and five others from Billy. Josh wasn’t really surprised at Elle’s incessant calls. If it wasn’t so late, she’d probably still be calling, stubborn as she was. Josh deleted all their texts and calls, and went about blocking numbers. Just as he was about to block Elle’s number, the last of the bunch, a text rang in from her.

 **Elle  
** **1:37 AM**

**_We’ll drop your stuff off with your parents when we hit Columbus._ **

Josh quickly blocked the number, and with it went the text.

After that, he turned off the lights, laying in the dark, eyes closed and thoughts racing. He grew warm, kicked off the sheets. He regulated his breathing, concentrated on not catching fire. Eventually, he grabbed his phone again, punching in the passcode and finding a stupid quiz game he’d downloaded three months back but never really played. It took his mind off of things, trying to remember useless facts his history teacher had tried to get him to memorize, or trying (and failing) to guess the sports related questions.

Josh didn’t remember falling asleep, but he must’ve, because the next thing he knew there was banging on his door. He groggily stood, stepping up to the door and opening it to find a smiling Brendon. Still half asleep, Josh decided it was too early for this.

“Were you still asleep?” Brendon asked, and received a tired nod back. “Dude, it’s past noon. I think it’s almost twelve-thirty.”

Brendon was right. When Josh went over to the bed to grab his phone and to put on some socks, the time read as 12:21 PM. Josh hadn’t slept this late in a long time.

Josh didn’t really know his way around DCD2, so he followed Brendon to wherever it was the taller man was leading him. It turned out to be a combination kitchen/dining room, where roughly eight other people were settled at various tables with food in front of them. Josh recalled Patrick telling him there were nine permanent residents at DCD2. Josh was either the only temporary resident or there were some people who weren’t currently eating.

Josh walked up to a large counter where an assortment of food was set out. A pot of what must have been Kraft Dinner caught his eye, and Josh took a large scoop of it onto a plate. On the counter across was a bag of bread and a toaster, so Josh popped in a couple of pieces, and found the butter before long. Once the toast popped up, he buttered it and set it onto the corner of his plate. Brendon had since sat down at the large dining room in the corner, where everyone else was, settled between Patrick and a guy who was a head or more taller than the former even sitting down. On Patrick’s other side was Andy, who sat across from Joe, and next to Joe and across from Patrick was Pete. At the end of the table was Gerard, a yellow tulip behind his ear, sat across what must’ve been his brother Mikey, leaving their friend Frank at the head of the table.

Somewhat hesitantly, Josh plopped down between Gerard and Pete, who kept going in their conversations for a few minutes until everyone at the table quieted. Patrick made sure Josh knew everyone (he was right when he guessed who Mikey and Frank were, and the guy next to Brendon was called Dallon). Josh also learned what everyone’s mutations were, and they learned his; Andy was a healer; Joe could influence emotions; Mikey could teleport; Frank could grow and manipulate plants; and Dallon had elasticity.

After introductions were made, conversations around the table resumed, though they tried to implement Josh into it. He was still a bit too tired to be a good conversational partner, though, and settled for looking around at everyone. Pete had probably the biggest plate of food, and when Josh had commented that they had enough food laid out to feed an entire army, Brendon had laughed out, “or just Pete.” Aside from his own food, Pete was also occasionally stealing bites from Patrick’s plate when the other man wasn’t looking. Brendon was telling a story about something or other, and it seemed to be a funny one, since it got Dallon and Andy laughing, though Joe huffed at them. Gerard was asking Frank about how his plants were doing, which was what led Josh to learning about the garden Frank had set up out back behind the building.

After lunch, Josh excused himself to go call his mother once Brendon and Dallon made it clear that they wouldn’t be letting him help with the cleanup. By then, it was almost 2 PM, meaning it was nearing 5 PM in Columbus. If Josh knew his mother, she’d be trying to figure out what to make for dinner, but probably wouldn’t have started. True to form, she picked up on the second ring.

“ _Josh? Where are you? Are you okay? I heard what happened, it’s all over the news!_ ” His mother informed him. Josh blinked, but wasn’t entirely surprised. The Mutant Control Bureau would probably have shown up last night after he’d fled; mutant cases were treated of the utmost importance, and often made the national news. Josh loathed to find out what they would be saying about him right now.

“I’m fine, Mom, I’m okay. I ran off after it happened, and this guy called Patrick found me. He’s really nice, he took me to this place, I think he called it DCD2 or Decaydance or something? But it’s full of mutants, so that’s cool, I guess,” Josh explained, though it took several more repetitions of this information to finally reassure his mother that he was in fact, safe and unharmed.

“ _Forgive me for being worried, Joshua,_ ” she said, a bit exasperated, “ _but it’s not every day your oldest son’s face is plastered all over Fox News next to the MCB and FBI’s phone numbers. Honestly._ ” And Josh was smart enough to concede that yes, she did have a proper reason to worry. Hell, Josh himself was worried.

“Mom, this is probably a stupid question, but do you think I’d be able to come home?” Josh chanced. He heard his mother’s sigh, clear as if they were speaking face to face.

“ _Sweetie, nothing would please me more than having you here with me right now, but it’s just not safe. You said you were in a safe place, right? Would they let you stay there indefinitely?_ ” Josh didn’t know, but promised he’d ask Patrick, who wandered in a few moments later, as if he’d been summoned.

“Oh, sorry, Josh. I didn’t realize you were on the phone, I can come back later.” Patrick moved back towards the door, but Josh stopped him.

“Actually, Patrick, I need to ask you something. I’m talking to my mom right now, but she thinks it’d be safer for me here, you know?” Josh explained. He was trying to form his next question when Patrick spoke up, probably knowing what he was about to ask.

“You wanna know if you can stay here for a while?” Patrick asked, and Josh confirmed his answer with a shy nod. “Of course, man! You can stay as long as you need to!”

* * *

 

After Patrick had told Josh that he could stay at DCD2 for however long was necessary, Josh had put his phone on speaker and he, Patrick, and his mother had discussed the best course of action regarding Josh not really having anything of his with him. It was decided that the next day after lunch, Mikey would take Josh to his parents’ house in Columbus to get some of his things. Josh’s mother said she’d ask his father and Jordan to go down to his apartment to get his things, and agreed to pick him up a new telephone charger and some piercing cleaner on her way home from work the next day as well.

After plans were worked out, Josh had gathered up enough courage to ask if he could freely explore the DCD2 building, since he didn’t have much else to do, and Patrick said that he could. With the exception of one area in the basement, Josh was allowed to go pretty much wherever on the property.

DCD2, as Josh learns, has six floors in all. The first floor is rather communal, with it’s most notable features include the living room where Josh first met Brendon the night before, the combination kitchen/dining room, and, of all things, a music room. The second floor is mostly bedrooms, though they’re all empty, and at the end of one hallway is an infirmary, looking mostly unused. The third floor is entirely made up of bedrooms, and Josh knows better than to go snooping into others’ rooms, though he does grab his dirty clothes from the night before to give to Andy, who’s doing laundry and offered to clean Josh’s clothes for him.

Above the third floor is a fourth, windowless and almost entirely open into a training room, and it’s evident just by looking at it that it can withstand probably every mutant power Josh could name. It looks kind of like a nuclear bunker, really; the walls are metal, though Josh doesn’t know what kind, and the room is entirely windowless. It does have great airflow, though, which makes sense; if any number of mutants were in here training at one time with various different powers, it would be nice for them all to be able to breathe. Brendon is in the room alone, staring down a training dummy and muttering under his breath. For a few moments, nothing happens, but Brendon keeps trying. Eventually, a glow surrounds him, colourful and wispy, almost like rainbow patterned smoke. The dummy moves forwards a couple of inches. Brendon deflates, and turns around, spotting Josh.

“Hey man! Anything I can help you with?” Brendon asks, and his voice doesn’t give away the fact that he apparently just made an underwhelming amount of progress with his powers.

“No, not really,” says Josh, “I’m just kind of exploring.”

“Yeah, it is a pretty big place, huh?” Josh nods, and Brendon smiles. “Now, how much of that shitty display of mine did you just see?” He doesn’t even skip a beat, and his voice remains steady, almost as if he’s all too used to messing up his powers.

“I didn’t see too much. Just kinda, smoke, and then the dummy moved a bit.” Josh assured. Brendon tilted his head.

“Man, that is a lot less than I thought you’d have seen. Oh well, though. You’ve seen a little bit of my powers; can I see yours?” And thus began Brendon’s insistence upon seeing Josh’s powers, and the latter caved within five minutes.

Josh moved to the center of the room, making Brendon stay at least five feet away from him. While he was at least okay at controlling his powers, having had them for so long, he was unused to having anyone outside his family witnessing them, much less being up close to see them.

Josh wasn’t one to really show off with his powers, so he kept it simple and let his fingertips ignite, slowly spreading across his fingers and palms, but never beyond his wrists. He could mess with the fire’s temperature and change it’s colour from a dull red to a bright white if he wanted to, or let every single inch of his skin become consumed in flame, but he doesn’t. His skin and hair may be fireproof, but his clothes are not, and he has no interest in stripping or igniting perfectly good clothes just to show another mutant his abilities.

Eventually, Brendon is satisfied with Josh’s display, and lets him wander off again. Josh finds his way up one last flight of stairs to the topmost floor of DCD2. It’s attic space, which would have been easy enough to guess, though it’s so starkly empty Josh does a double-take. Nine permanent residents and there’s two, maybe three boxes, and what looks like a banjo case, maybe? It’s dusty, and there are no light fixtures or windows, so Josh has to rely on his phone’s flashlight to see, and doesn’t like the creepy feeling he gets up here. In one far corner is a vomit-coloured recliner, torn and lumpy, obviously having seen better days. Ratty quilts in the first box by the stairway, and Josh almost steps on an old icepick, stained with something brown that looks less like rust and more like dried blood. Josh really hopes it isn’t actually dried blood. After moving his foot away from the sharp, browned point, Josh scrambles back down the stairs and to the third floor.

He stays in his room for a little bit, but there isn’t much to do there on his own, and there’s still a while before a time most people deem acceptable to get food in the evening, so Josh decides to explore some more. He hasn’t been into the basement yet, though the attic had kind of ruined any possibilities of him going down there for a while, so he heads outside instead. He’s a bit curious about the garden Gerard and Frank told him about earlier. He can see what looks like a greenhouse from his window when he draws the blackout curtains, and a few budding trees off to the side.

When Josh finally finds himself in front of the greenhouse and the trees, he realizes that there’s what appears to be a flower garden behind the greenhouse. The greenhouse itself is a decent size, with about six rows of veggies in different stages of growth. There are placards all over the place, sitting in front of plant sections and explaining what they are. Carrots, peas, green beans, celery, potatoes, onions, tomatoes and even garlic. It’s all clearly marked and well cared for. The greenhouse itself is also heated, but it isn’t heated in a way that’s stifling, or maybe that’s just Josh.

Outside, the trees are evenly spaced, about twelve of them. Six or seven of them are apple trees, Josh has seen those before, but the second kind of tree he wasn’t so sure. They had white buds in various states of bloom, though, which was pretty to look at. The trees weren’t marked with placards like the veggies were, but Josh figured that when they had fruit to bear, it was likely quite obvious what kind of trees they were.

The flower garden was probably the most beautiful one Josh had ever seen, and he’d seen pictures of some pretty nice flower gardens. Even in the January temperatures, rows upon rows of flowers in every hue Josh could imagine were blooming and growing and thriving. Like the veggies, there were placards to distinguish what flowers were which, though some, small and obviously quite new, lacked these distinguishments.

Josh could have been admiring the flowers for five minutes or fifty when Frank appeared behind him, wearing a black jacket and a smile. “You can take a couple up to your room, brighten the place up a bit, if you want,” he offered. “You seem like a colourful kind of guy.”

Josh chuckled a bit. “What gave it away?” He joked. Frank gestured towards Josh’s arm.

“Well, the hair seems like a good hint, but the tattoo definitely screams “colourful” to me.” And it was true, a large portion of his right arm was visible, given that the shirt he was wearing had short sleeves. Most of the tree and the sunset were visible, though the supernova was hidden under the sleeve.

Josh ended up doing as Frank told him, and took a handful of flowers back inside with him. He had some violet and white heathers, as well as some irises. Frank had also happily let Josh know what his flowers meant; violet heathers for solitude, white heathers for protection, and iris for faith and hope. He thought those meanings fitting, even if it was accidental that he’d chosen those flowers in the first place. Josh ended up putting them in a glass of water on his bedside table, since he didn’t know where he’d have found a vase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. I'll try to update between April 15th and 22nd with a third chapter, since I'm not likely to get the sixth chapter finished by the 25th of this month. I'm still not even sure if I'll combine what I have of six with the fifth chapter or just continue what I'm doing as a chapter on it's own. I dunno. I just know I've got about 30k words already written for this monster and am nowhere near close to introducing the next big point in my overall plot.
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated. As some of my readers may have noticed, I tend to answer all my comments, so. Do with that what you will.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and thank you for your patience.


	3. Good People Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't think I'd be updating today, in all honesty. I was stuck for a while in a certain bit, but thankfully managed to get myself unstuck with a bit of tweaking and pushing forward. So, update today.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has read and left kudos or comments on the first and second chapters. It's a nice feeling to see that you like it, and I hope you'll like this chapter too.
> 
> Chapter title is from Fairly Local by Twenty One Pilots.

By the time Josh had gotten back from exploring DCD2, someone had gotten hungry enough to cook food, and dinner was well underway. This time he insisted on helping with the dishes, drying them off as Andy cleaned them and Mikey put them away. After that was done, Pete insisted everyone gather in the living room for a movie marathon, and refused to let anyone leave until the end of the first movie. The first to leave ended up being Brendon, whose energy seemed to have been depleted earlier in the day and had nearly fallen asleep watching  _ The Empire Strikes Back _ . After Brendon went Joe, and then Andy, and then Frank and the Way brothers, until it was only Pete, Patrick, Dallon, and Josh left in front of the TV. Josh himself left while Pete and Patrick were playfully arguing over which Star Wars movie was better. Patrick insisted it was _Jedi_ , while Pete claimed to have an undying faith in the newest installment. Josh wouldn’t admit it, but he kind of agreed with Pete. He really liked Finn and Poe from  _ The Force Awakens _ .

Josh collapsed onto his bed rather dramatically, but didn’t bother moving, and fell asleep fully clothed, with the right side of his face buried deeply in his pillow. The sun woke Josh up early the next morning, though he simply rolled over and fell back to sleep. Around 9 AM, he finally rolled out of bed, noting the bundle he’d probably knocked off his bed during the night. It looked like Andy had returned his clothes while he’d been wandering.

Being a semi-functioning adult, Josh took a shower and changed his clothes, though he reused the same towel to dry his hair. More yellow stained the towel. Josh made a mental note to try to remember to bring his own, already stained towels, when he got some of his stuff from home later.

Down in the kitchen, Gerard was sipping coffee while Mikey made himself some eggs, and Joe was eating some toast. Josh rummaged around the cupboards looking for cereal, and silently cheered when he saw the box of Reese’s Puffs.

“Can I have some of these?” Josh asked.

“Yeah, go for it,” Joe replied. Josh poured himself a bowl, added the milk, and dug out a spoon before sitting down.

After he’d eaten and put away his dishes, Josh found his way back into the training room upstairs. This time it was empty, and he let himself mess around with his powers for a while. Lunchtime rolled around, and Josh assisted Dallon in making some food before too many people crowded in demanding to be fed. It seemed that all too quickly, lunch was over, and Mikey was asking him if he was ready to go. Josh called his mother to make sure she was home, and when she confirmed that she was, Josh told her he’d be there soon.

Mikey took hold of both of Josh’s hands, meeting his gaze. “Alright. I don’t know where I’m going, so I need you to concentrate on where we’re going, okay?”

Josh did as told. He pictured his family home, his mother’s smile, the way his father teased him, calling him a firebug. He pictured Christmas with his siblings, helping Ashley with her homework, playing Smash with Jordan, or babysitting Abbie while his parents went out. A wave of  _ something _ hit him, whether it was nostalgia or nausea he wasn’t sure, but he opened his eyes and he and Mikey were standing in his parents’ driveway in Columbus in the middle of winter. Mikey seemed to be shivering already, and Josh was quick to lead him inside.

His mother was there to greet them, and offered Mikey a mug of hot chocolate to help him warm up before telling Josh his things were in the basement, and did he need any help packing? Josh politely declined.

It was odd seeing all of his belongings (or at least a large majority of them) laid out in bags and boxes in his parents’ basement. His mother had already taken down some bags for him, and gathered some of his essentials into a smaller bag. Toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, razor, deodorant, his gauges, and the bottle of piercing cleaner were all in a large ziplock bag off to the side, with the phone charger next to it. He grabbed the backpack and plopped those in, alongside his laptop, a pair of drumsticks, and his CD case. Josh also had a few necklaces and bracelets in a box which joined the other items in the backpack.

In the large dufflebag, Josh packed clothes. Jeans, sweatpants, shirts, underwear, socks, shorts, tanks, two hoodies, a rain jacket, and three pairs of shoes. There’s still some room in both bags, so Josh puts the picture frame with last year’s Christmas photo into the duffle, and a few other personal items as well. A couple of his favourite movies end up in the backpack too, including a copy of  _ Who Framed Roger Rabbit _ that Jordan had bought him as a gag gift when he turned 25.

Once both bags are packed and ready, Josh surveys the basement as if he’s never coming back. His drumset is in the corner in all it’s alien-patterned glory, with the bouncing seat behind it and a spare set of drumsticks resting on the snare, as if begging to be played. He wishes he could just sit there and pound away his problems, pretend that he hasn’t permanently ruined his public reputation or that he’s not going to have to live with a group of complete strangers possibly for the rest of his life, but he can’t. Mikey is upstairs, probably having his ear talked off by Josh’s mom, who’d no doubt been questioning him on every minute detail about DCD2 that Josh himself doesn’t even know, and he doesn’t even know how long he’s been down here but he knows once he goes back upstairs he’ll be hugging his mother goodbye and won’t be seeing her again for a long time. If he puts this off long enough, maybe he can see his father one last time too, or even his siblings, though he knows the latter is unrealistic. He just doesn’t feel ready. He’s not ready to face the reality of what’s happened, or the reality that he’s kind of losing his independence, or the reality that there’s nothing he can do to go back to his normal life.

He could have been crouched there just staring at his things for days or for seconds, Josh wouldn’t know, when he hears footsteps on the stairs, and soon his mother is pulling him into a tight hug. Josh doesn’t see Mikey, but he wouldn’t have had the chance anyway, since he buries his face in his mother’s shoulder almost immediately and begins to cry, hot tears that are mostly vapor by the time they leave his tear ducts.

“I don’t wanna go,” Josh tells her, and she pats his back, runs her fingers through his hair, does what she can to comfort her son.

“I know, sweetie, I know. I wish you didn’t have to go, but it’s just not safe here for you.” Now his mom sounds close to tears, and if she starts crying Josh doesn’t know what he’ll do so he holds her closer, tighter, tries to cherish this moment because he doesn’t know when the next will come.

Eventually, someone lets go. Josh isn’t sure if it’s himself or his mother but he knows he’s still crying steamy tears as they walk side by side up the stairs, Josh dragging the duffle bag behind him and his mother carrying the backpack. Mikey is sitting on the couch, and is quick to stand, heading for the door. Both Duns follow wordlessly.

Josh straps on the backpack and readjusts his grip on the duffle bag as Mikey puts his shoes back on, and his mother brings him into a final hug.

“I love you,” Josh chokes out as she lets him go.

“I love you, too,” his mother tells him as Mikey teleports them away.

* * *

 

It feels like finality as Josh packs his things away in the safety of his room at DCD2. It feels like this is his new life, like his old sense of normalcy has been thrown out the third story window even though the fucking thing hasn’t been opened in the entire time Josh has resided in it, which is about three days, plus the time it went unoccupied before then, which he can’t put a date on. He’s a bit afraid to even try to open the window, really.

Josh’s laptop goes on the desk in the corner, and he quickly inputs the WiFi password Patrick had given him. DCD2’s WiFi is the best Josh has ever had the pleasure of using. His movies and CD case go onto the shelf above the desk. The family photo on the bedside table. His ziplock of essentials just kind of stays on top of the dresser for now, while he clothes go inside. He’s already returned the phone charger he borrowed from Gerard. At least, he thinks it was Gerard’s. No one really specified who it had belonged to, but now he’s got his own so it has been returned.

Josh ends up keeping the drumsticks on his bed for the time being. He doesn’t want to put them somewhere too visible, but he also doesn’t want to keep them locked away somewhere he’ll forget them. He’d set them on the bed twenty minutes ago when he started unpacking and he’s been more glancing back at them than unpacking ever since. The drumsticks were the first thing he’d unpacked.

As soon as Josh and Mikey had gotten back, Gerard had come running into the room and dragged Mikey off, claiming to need his help with “brother stuff,” and he doesn’t see either of them for the rest of the day. At dinner, Frank looks a bit disappointed that neither of his friends have shown up, so Josh sits with him and discuss the merits of having an aloe plant in the garden out back. Frank claims that they don’t really need it, because any burns they get could easily be healed by Andy, but Josh isn’t easily swayed.

“It’s good for sunburns, which isn’t something you’d normally get someone to heal unless it’s really really bad; plus aloe can be used on small cuts and scratches, and it’s natural.” Josh points out. Frank decides he might consider it.

That night, Josh stays in his room, playing one of his CDs on his computer for background noise as he scrolls through Tumblr, and as he’s reblogging a video of someone’s cat falling off a table in an exaggerated way, he gets a notification claiming he’s gotten an ask message. When he opens it, he sees it’s from one of his mutuals. He’s talked to them two or three times, but doesn’t really consider them friends.

 

**_You shouldn’t even exist. Fucking mutant. You deserve everything that’s happening to you. Surprised no one’s called the MCB on you yet, mutt._ **

Josh deletes the ask, blocks the user, and goes back to cat videos and X-Files memes. He tries not to think too hard about the message, even when he sees that another one of his mutuals is complaining about mutants in a thinly-veiled vague post. He logs off of Tumblr and texts his siblings instead.

* * *

 

The Tumblr incident isn’t the only one where Josh sees the repercussions of the concert affecting him.

About a week after he’d visited his mother, he was sitting in the living room with Dallon, Forensic Files playing on HLN in the background while neither really pay attention. Dallon has a book in front of him, while Josh scrolls through his social media. He’s blocked a large number of his mutuals on Tumblr already, and is toying with the idea of turning off the anonymous function on his asks, if not the ask system altogether.

Somewhere through all of Josh’s endless scrolling, he has failed to notice that _a.)_ Dallon has seemingly wandered off, and _b.)_ Forensic Files has given way to Nancy Grace.

She starts off the show talking about some murder case that was being talked about a lot the previous month because the culprit had been caught, and apparently they’ve now gotten a fixed date for the trial to start. Then, however, Nancy Grace starts on a segment that makes Josh freeze in all his movements. He’s sure he’s not even breathing at this point.

“  _ No new information has surfaced about the whereabouts of mutant Joshua Dun, last seen committing an act of arson at a concert venue in Los Angeles a week ago. Authorities have interviewed his family, who claim to have no knowledge of where he is, though eyewitness accounts put Dun’s father and brother in his Columbus apartment the day after the attacks. _ ” Josh feels sick. An attack, she’d called it. An act of arson. It was neither of those things, but no one would believe Josh if he tried to tell his side of the story. Hell, Josh would likely be locked up for the rest of his life, or worse, if he even tried telling his side of the story. The MCB really put an emphasis on the “control” part of their name.

Josh is helpless to do anything other than watch as Nancy Grace not only gives off false information about him, but essentially puts him on trial right there on her show. She brings in “experts” who back up her false claims with statistics Josh has never heard before about violence and homicide in the mutant population, and Josh wants to scream because some of this information is just so absurdly exaggerated that he’s sure it’s false. At the same time, a part of him wants to believe it. If mutants weren’t a danger, why would the government try so hard to police them like this?

Josh is only half-listening as some mutant rights activist gets silenced and screamed over by Nancy Grace when Dallon comes back into the room, and immediately catches sight of the television. A video from the concert is being played, it looks like venue security footage, and Nancy Grace is trying to convince her audience that Josh deliberately caused the fire. Dallon quickly stretches to grab the remote and turns the TV off in one quick motion.

Even though the shrill voice on the TV is no longer tormenting him, Josh’s phone keeps buzzing with Twitter notifications. Nancy Grace had shown a screenshot of one of his Tweets defending mutants to try to hammer to her audience how much of a menace he was, and since she hadn’t bothered to censor his username or profile picture, many people have been tagging Josh in hate-fueled messages and sending him threats. As the notification sound on his phone sounds three times in rapid succession, Josh shrinks in on himself. Dallon walks over and sits down next to Josh on the couch, reaching over and gently rubbing his arm comfortingly. Josh uncurls just a bit, and Dallon grabs his phone with his free hand.

“You should delete the Twitter app on your phone,” Dallon advises, “and maybe turn off your notifications too.”

“They’re still going to keep sending me shit,” Josh huffs, although he internally admits that Dallon’s probably got the right idea.

“Yes, they will, but unfortunately that’s just how people are. Some are scared, some are angry, and some are just prejudiced. Maybe some of them will change in the future, maybe they won’t, but for right now there’s nothing we can really do to stop them. If you let them get to you, you’re just giving them more power over you.”

Slowly, Josh manages to gather his courage, and finally unlocks his phone, logging out of his Twitter account one last time and deleting the app off his phone entirely. It feels a bit like relief, but he’s still upset, and he’s sure Dallon can tell.

“Want me to go get Joe?” The taller mutant offers. Josh shakes his head.

“No, I’m fine. I just don’t wanna be alone right now.” Josh assures him.

Eventually, they turn the TV back on, but this time, instead of watching something from any of the hundreds of channels available, they pop in a movie. Dallon lets Josh pick first, and he chooses the 2007 adaptation of  _ Hairspray _ , because that movie always gives him hope about the world, and he just likes musicals.

By the time  _ Hairspray _ ends, Brendon has joined them, and insists they watch  _ Space Jam _ “for the memes.” Before the movie has even started, Brendon’s texted everyone, and with the exception of Pete who’s off to pick up Bronx for the week, the entirety of DCD2 joins in on a nostalgia-fueled movie night. It’s fun, and Josh enjoys himself, but the incident from earlier is still at the back of his mind, and he zones out from the movies a few times. At one point, Josh refocuses only to find that Patrick is imitating the voices of the uncles from  _ Casper _ (Frank had wanted to watch both  _ Addams Family _ movies, and then Gerard suggested  _ Casper _ afterwards), and making everyone laugh. Like the last movie night, though, eventually it gets late and people begin to turn in for the night. Josh is among the first to go back upstairs, but he doesn’t sleep that night. His anxiety is pounding away at his self-esteem and he can’t help but replay all the things that were said about him on television.

He doesn’t really want to get up the next day, but eventually the hunger is too overpowering so he has no choice but to head down to the kitchen and hope he can avoid as much interaction as possible. His sour mood will do nothing to help his social skills.

Patrick and Pete are in the kitchen, digging through cupboards and cabinets and drawers. Sitting at the counter and intently staring into the oven where Josh sees cookies of some kind baking is a blond child, maybe seven or eight. Bronx, his brain supplies. The child must be Bronx.

“What are you looking for?” Josh asks Pete and Patrick as he steps forward, pulling out the first box of cereal he can find and then rummaging for a bowl.

“Oven mitts,” Pete says, deep in concentration, when the oven timer goes off. Pete barely masks a few choice words as he and Patrick continue to frantically search for the oven mitts.

There’s already a cooling rack on the counter so Josh opens to over, allowing a bit of internal heat to pool in his hands. Not enough to catch flame, but enough to keep him from getting burnt as he pulls the trays of cookies out of the oven and sets them on the cooling rack. Then he turns back to the oven to turn it off, missing for a second the way Bronx is gaping at him. When Josh catches this detail, he shrinks in on himself, just a bit.

“That was amazing!” Bronx beams, and then, “is that your powers? Are you in-vul-neer-uh-bul?”

“Invulnerable,” Patrick supplies, though Josh had understood what Bronx meant. The eight-year-old doesn’t seem to mind being corrected, though.

“Yeah, that! Are you?” He asks again. Josh shakes his head.

“No, I’m pyrokinetic.” Why does Josh use such a big word in front of the confused child? He doesn’t know. He wishes his mouth would stop working for long enough to think about what he’s saying.

“What’s that?” Bronx asks. By now, Patrick has given up on the now-useless search and is instead taking the cookies out of the pans so they don’t stick, and Pete has settled on the other side of the counter next to his son.

“It means Josh is made of fire,” Pete jokes, but Bronx thinks this is the coolest thing ever and would probably spend the next ten minutes asking Josh more questions about his powers if Patrick hadn’t offered them all each a cookie. Josh takes one, and does in fact spend the next ten minutes talking to Bronx, though they discuss a Netflix cartoon that Bronx likes to watch.

Eventually, Josh is the only one in the kitchen, and as he stands eating soggy Cheerios at 3:51 PM in pyjama bottoms and yesterday’s shirt, he finds his mood is better than it has been in all week.

* * *

 

Chores at DCD2 were an ever-alternating team effort, Josh quickly learned.

Breakfast was a free for all, since everyone tended to wake up and get started on their days at their own pace. Dissimilarly, lunch and dinner were under the rule that whoever got hungry enough first would make the meal, though for the most part two or three of the mutants ended up cooking. Once every week or so, someone would be sent out to get takeout as well. This tended to be on weekends, usually either Fridays or Sundays, when everyone was too lazy to even think about trying to feed ten people on their own.

Likewise with the groceries, someone was sent out every seven to ten days to restock, though this had certain limitations. Brendon wasn’t allowed to go alone, because he’d come back with more junk and booze than actually food, though in general at least two people were usually went, so as to make the process easier. DCD2’s grocery list was budgeted by the network that ran the place, so sometimes they had to buy certain brands to meet the price range. They also had to be mindful to get certain vegan options, since Andy was vegan.

When it came to things like doing laundry or cleaning floors, DCD2 had a schedule which alternated from day to day or week to week, depending on how often a task needed to be performed. Some of these tasks were negotiable, though. No one would make the shorter residents like Frank or Patrick do something that required any amount of height, like dusting off ceiling fans or light fixtures. Brendon was to be kept away from windows and electrical currents, due to past incidents with his powers. Josh sensed that there were a lot of things Brendon wasn’t supposed to do, unsupervised or at all. Many of the rules at DCD2 seemed to come from Brendon having done something or other.

For the most part, the residents of DCD2 were in charge of how clean their rooms were, though one rule was the floor had to moped at least once a month, and another was bedsheets had to be changed every two weeks.

On one’s own, there wasn’t much to do at DCD2. There was the music room, and a gym in the basement (Josh had been relieved when it proved a lot less creepy than the attic), as well as the training room and the living room, but even those could get lonely pretty quickly if you were on your own. Given that everyone was familiar enough to call themselves friends, a lot of group activities were the norm. Every two to three days found itself being declared a movie marathon night, or a “family” game night, or sometimes they’d mess around with their powers for kicks. They also sometimes had sparring sessions, mediated by Patrick, Dallon, or Mikey, up in the training room. Josh’s first sparring session found itself about two weeks after he’d arrived at DCD2, and two days after Bronx had left. He was hesitant to go up and fight himself, so he spent the entire time watching.

Pete and Mikey made for an interesting fight. Pete would zip to and fro, trying to catch Mikey off guard, but the younger of the Way brothers would just teleport away before Pete could land a hit. Eventually, Pete exhausted himself, and Mikey was quick to claim his victory. Not one to give up quite yet, Mikey called for another challenger to step forward, and he ended up in a match with Gerard. The two did more teasing than actual sparring, though at one point when Mikey tried to tackle his brother, Gerard turned himself intangible and this led to him accidentally causing Mikey to phase halfway through the floor. Josh tried to stifle his laughter as he watched Mikey flail around, but failed. He didn’t feel too bad though, since Frank, Brendon, and Gerard were also laughing. Patrick looked like he was trying to hold back laughter himself. Fortunately for Mikey, Gerard was kind enough to help him back up into the training room.

An unlikely matchup was Frank versus Brendon, though it also made sense. Being inside, Frank couldn’t really use his powers, though Josh honestly had no idea how effective plant life would be in battle anyways. Likewise, Brendon’s chaos magic was still too chaotic for him to control, though not for lack of trying. He had tried to send a puff of rainbow coloured smoke to distract Frank or keep him from fighting back, or  _ something _ , but the sizable cloud was gone by the time it crossed the makeshift ring to the shorter man. Frank did let out a fake cough, though whether it was meant to be a joke or just to reassure Brendon was uncertain. In the end, Brendon lost, spending more time trying to get his powers to do something than actually fighting back Frank’s attacks.

Eventually, the matches ended, though some interesting combinations were thrown in. At one point, it had been Joe and Andy against Pete and Patrick, which ended with Pete complaining that Joe had given him a hangover while Patrick teasingly imitated Pete’s whiny tone and made both Andy and Joe laugh. That match had ended in a tie.

And so, days passed in laughter and fun at DCD2, and Josh grew used to it fairly quickly. He adapted to the routine quickly enough, and he got used to having so many people around constantly. By the end of his second week there, it felt like they were all his friends. He’d never really had so many before.

There was Gerard, who almost always had flowers in his hair or behind his ear or on his jacket, and Mikey laughing quietly behind his brother while Frank told them both jokes. Joe, with the calming presence, and Andy, who’s intimidating exterior didn’t seem so intimidating once you knew him. Pete and Patrick, who teased and joked around with each other, and who sometimes gave each other affection like no one was watching. Brendon, whose magic was still so chaotic that he ended up drenched in scalding hot coffee when he tried to will himself a new mug one morning, and Dallon who didn’t even say anything as he stretched his arm to reach for a dishcloth to wipe him off. With everyone around, it began to feel a lot less like like being forced out of his old life and a bit more like something he’d been missing for a long time. It became a welcome change, and while Josh still missed home and his family and his life, everything was starting to feel okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am aware that Nancy Grace has left HLN, and I am aware it was because her contract with them expired. I am aware that there's a new show that's taken her old timeslot, but let's just pretend that she renewed her contract, okay?
> 
> Poor Josh. I feel bad for putting him through Nancy Grace's bullshit, but it was for plot purposes.
> 
> I feel kind of bad for Mikey too, I can't help but laugh every time I reread the part of him and Gerard sparring. 
> 
> I intend on next updating on April 15th, so stayed tuned. Someone new comes to DCD2 for you all to meet. I think you'll like it.
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated. As some of my readers may have noticed, I tend to answer all my comments, so. Do with that what you will.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and thank you for your patience.


	4. A Birth and a Death (on the Same Day)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, again.
> 
> I return, with a new chapter for you all. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who left kudos and comments on the previous chapters, it means a lot to me to see what everyone has to say.
> 
> Today's chapter title brought to you by Twin Skeleton's (Hotel In NYC) by Fall Out Boy.

Tyler Joseph arrives at DCD2 just over a month after Josh does.

Josh isn’t at DCD2 when Patrick brings the lanky mutant into the safe haven. He’s in Columbus, having dinner with his parents and siblings- a late lunch for him, really, since he’s living in the LA timezone. Mikey and Gerard had dropped him off since they were going to visit their own parents in Jersey.

Mikey was really cool about taking the other mutants anywhere if they asked nicely enough. Some of them still had good relationships with friends or family outside of DCD2, so Mikey had days planned once a month dedicated to taking everyone who wanted to, to visit outside the safe haven, or to other safe havens. On the most recent of these days, Josh had visited his siblings, whom he hadn’t seen since before he’d left Columbus to tour.

This was actually the third time Josh was visiting family members, not counting the occasion he’d come to pick up his things. He’d come back to his parents’ home with Mikey and the two spent about an hour taking apart and transporting Josh’s drum kit into the music room at DCD2, and then Josh had spent another half hour resetting his kit. The idea to transport the kit had come from Andy, who’d noticed Josh tapping out a beat on the coffee table in front of the living room couch one too many times and told Josh he was free to use the one already in the music room. After what had happened the last time he’d used someone else’s kit, Josh was wary to say the least. Thus, he’d eventually gathered his courage and asked Mikey about transporting his own kit back with him, and thankfully Mikey had been happy to help. For all their troubles, Josh’s mother had also sent them back with probably enough meatloaf to feed an entire high school populous for three days. It proved to be a popular choice though, and there wasn’t any left the next day.

This time, mindful of Frank and Andy, Josh’s mother would be sending back some sort of chocolate cake she said was vegan-friendly but rather delicious. Wacky cake, it was called, or something similar. Josh had gotten a taste of the batter when he’d arrived and it tasted pretty good.

Josh was helping to clear out the dirty dishes from the table when Mikey and Gerard arrived back to pick him up, and Josh’s mother was quick to swarm them where they stood in the doorway. She had asked Josh a lot about DCD2 over dinner, and he’d told her about everyone there. She had definitely been curious when Josh told her about Gerard always having flowers on him, and now was no exception. On this particular occasion, Gerard had lily of the valley flowers in his hair, held there seemingly by pure will. Josh’s mother cooed over how adorable she found this while Josh finished helping his siblings with the dishes. When Josh finally emerged from the kitchen balancing three large pans of cake, his mother was finished gushing over the flowers and telling the Way brothers about the food she was sending them back with.

Thankfully, between the three of them it was fairly easy to teleport back into DCD2’s kitchen to put the food away. As they all three left the kitchen, though, they didn’t expect to run into Patrick, leading an unfamiliar young man through the building.

The man behind Patrick was small, Josh noticed first. He wasn’t quite small in the same way a child was, he was taller than Josh, really, but he was thin and lanky and seemed to shrink in on himself at the sight of new people, obscuring Josh’s already poor view of him. The guy had on a skeleton hoodie with a skull hood pulled up over his head and zipped partially down his forehead, hiding his face and eyes while still allowing him to peer out at the world around him. On his back was a backpack, and he had some sort of instrument case in his left hand as well. It looked to Josh like it might have held a ukulele or a mandolin.

“Oh, hey. When did you guys get back?” Asked Patrick.

“Just now,” Gerard chirped, “Josh’s mom sent cake!”

“Who’s this?” Mikey asked, gesturing to the man, now trying to subtly hide behind Patrick as focus shifted to him.

“Oh, this is Tyler. Tyler, this is Gerard,” a wave from Gerard, “his brother Mikey,” Patrick gestured to a nodding Mikey, “and Josh,” pointing out the yellow-haired man. Tyler gave a small, shy wave.

There was an awkward silence following the introductions, and Josh could have sworn it felt like he was standing too close to a plasma ball or something. Idly, he wondered what Tyler’s mutation was.

After a few moments, Josh awkwardly spoke up. “It’s nice to meet you, Tyler.” Internally, he was both debating reaching his hand out to offer a handshake, and cringing at how he sounded.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Tyler mumbled back, burrowing deeper into his hoodie.

Patrick saved them from yet another awkward silence within a five minute span. “Well, I’m gonna continue showing Tyler around. See you guys later.”

As Patrick led Tyler away, Josh could have sworn he turned around and looked at him one last time.

* * *

 

The day Tyler arrived was scheduled to be “family” game night, and the predetermined game of the evening was to be Team Scrabble.

Since there were so many mutants at DCD2 (eleven now, with Tyler declared a permanent resident when he’d made a full introduction at dinner), most games were played in teams. Yahtzee, Monopoly, even sometimes video games, everyone was divided into teams. They were technically meant to switch up team rosters every game night, but for the most part it stayed the same. Pete and Patrick would always end up together, the Ways ended up with either each other or one of them with Frank, and Joe and Andy were often on the same team too.

Since Scrabble was a four player game, they would be splitting up into four teams; three groups of three and then the remaining two together, starting with the base teams of Pete and Patrick, Andy and Joe, and Mikey and Gerard. Frank evidently joined the brothers, and Dallon and Brendon were separated so that the former was on Pete and Patrick’s team while the latter was with Andy and Joe. This left Josh and Tyler on their own two-man team.

For the most part, Scrabble is a disaster. They throw the rules out pretty quickly when Pete starts complaining that Gerard is checking his words for validity too often (he does this all of three times), and Brendon is either using his powers or just switching out letters when no one's looking because there is no way he gets the only tiles with the Q, Z, and X just on pure luck. No one bothers to keep score, so while precisely half the teams are actually trying to play, no one really knows how many points who had scored, and for some reason while Dallon had been counting score, he’d been counting by person and not by team so that’s a bust too.

Not really in the mood for a different board game, and definitely too lazy to set up a game console, they somehow settle on playing the party game Mafia. The furniture gets pushed back so that everyone can sit in a large circle in the middle of the living room, and Brendon is declared the narrator since he apparently comes up with the most creative death scenarios.

“Alright, shut up!” Brendon bellows, and then starts off. “The rules are as follows-”

“We don’t need to be told the rules, Bren, we’ve all played Mafia before,” Mikey interrupts. Brendon tuts at him.

“Oh, sweet Mikey, hush now. Rules can vary. Anywho!” Brendon claps his hands in front of him. “If I tap you on the back once you’re the Mafia. That one’s a bit obvious, you pick who dies. If you get tapped twice, you’re the angel, you try to save the person who’s gonna die. After every death, you’ll vote on who you think is guilty. Whoever has the most votes dies, innocent or guilty. If you’re dead, you can’t give hints.” Nodding to himself, Brendon instructs them all to cover their eyes and begins to walk around the circle.

The first round they play, Josh is the Mafia. This round is probably the shortest of the night, since he gets caught after failing to hide his reaction to Brendon’s creative tale of Andy’s death. He had been unanimously voted guilty and “executed” in-game, ending the round as Josh apologized for bumping Andy off first.

The next round, Mikey is the Mafia. Gerard is first to be killed, then Josh is saved, and he’s immediately killed afterwards. Mikey takes three more victims, Andy, Patrick, and Frank, before Joe, Pete, Tyler, and Dallon vote Mikey out. Gerard makes a show of complaining about being the first killed,  _ by his own brother of all people _ , and he only stops when Frank points out that he’d likely have done the same. As Gerard is forced to concede to this point, Mikey plucks the flower out of Gerard’s hair, an iris, and Gerard nearly flings himself at Mikey trying to get it back while everyone laughs at them. Brendon eventually breaks them up, though the iris doesn’t survive the scuffle.

They play several more rounds. Pete is almost as bad at being the mafia as Josh is, though he manages to kill two people before he’s found out. Patrick gets down to himself, Tyler, and Gerard before he loses. Andy kills Joe, Pete, and Patrick before giving himself up. Then, a new round begins, and everyone gets picked off one by one.

There’s only Tyler, Josh, and Joe left. Patrick had been killed first in the beginning of the round, effectively taking out the angel right away, and then everyone had been bumped off in their own turn. There’s a staring contest going on between the three surviving players while Brendon recounts the tale of Frank being found buried in his own flower garden in the space between the primrose and the gladioli.

“Alright! Tyler, who do you think the Mafia is?”

Tyler keeps his face straight. “Josh,” he says. It almost seems like he’s smirking.

“Ooh, harsh. Josh?”

“Joe,” he’d rather say Tyler, but then Joe would be more likely to pick Josh as well, and he really doesn’t want to lose this round.

“Tyler,” Joe says, unprompted.

“Well, then, since it seems no one can agree on a suspect, you’ll all just have to go to sleep and hope you don’t wake up dead.” And they do as told, Brendon prompts the Mafia, and then they’re told to open their eyes.

“Trohman,” he calls, “get your butt out of the circle. You choked on a blunt overnight.” Joe steps away as told. It’s only Tyler and Josh left, and he has to hand it to Tyler, the guy is definitely good at hiding. Not once this entire round has Josh even thought that Tyler would have been the Mafia. “Close your eyes, you two,” Brendon commands. Josh and Tyler do as told.

“Mafia man, head up. Do you wanna give yourself up, or are you gonna make this loser your bitch?” Brendon gets some form of non-verbal response from Tyler, and then he calls out, “heads up.”

“Joshua William Dun,” and Josh instantly regrets telling Brendon his full name that one time they played truth or dare, “you’re dead. Out. Into the graveyard. Tyler wins.”

This proves to be the last round of the night before someone accidentally turns the TV on and the rest all get distracted by the period detective show that’s playing. As they’re showing what appears to be a dead body on the screen, Tyler turns away and gets up, heading towards the doorway, mumbling about being tired.

“Tyler, do you remember where your room is?” Dallon asks.

“Think so,” Tyler nods.

“Josh, go with him? His room is right across from yours,” Patrick asks. Josh nods, following Tyler out of the room.

“You don’t have to show me,” Tyler tells him quietly, “I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t worry about it. I was going to head up soon anyway. I had a bit of a long day.” Josh assures. The rest of the walk up to their rooms is quiet, and only once they’re standing in front of their own bedroom doors does Josh speak up again. “If you need anything, I’m here, okay?”

“Okay.”

Josh looks over his shoulder to Tyler, then down to the floor, and back to Tyler.

“Goodnight, Tyler,” he says.

“Goodnight, Josh,” comes the reply.

* * *

 

As the days pass at DCD2, Tyler and Josh develop a tentative friendship.

It starts when Tyler stumbles into the music room with his ukulele the day after he arrives to find Josh pounding away at his drums to the beat of a Queen song. He watches for a bit, and compliments Josh on his skills before stumbling back out again. Josh barely has any time to thank Tyler for the compliment.

That day at lunch, Tyler seems unsure where to sit, so Josh offers him the empty seat next to himself. Tyler takes it, quietly thanking Josh and beginning to eat. He remains quiet for a bit, until someone mentions something or other that gets Tyler talking. Soon, he and Josh are discussing the possibility of aliens, and Tyler is telling Josh he’s watched far too much X-Files-  _ which, okay, but Tyler, countless star systems, there’s no way we’re alone in the universe. _

By Tyler’s fourth day, he’s utterly destroying Josh at Mario Kart, and repeatedly declaring himself the king of Nintendo games. In retaliation, Josh hits him with a blue shell just as Tyler is about to cross the finish line, and the CPU Luigi character overtakes him as Tyler sputters in disbelief.

On the fifth day after his arrival, Tyler stays cooped up in his room. He doesn’t come out to eat, or to get anything to drink, or for anything. Josh knocks shyly on his door but gets no response. He leaves Tyler be. The next day, Tyler pretends nothing happened, and Josh lets him, despite his internal questions.

Their friendship continues to grow, and Josh begins to notice certain things about Tyler. 

He doesn’t seem to have many changes of clothes. He has the clothes he’d arrived in, a pair of black jean with a blue t-shirt and his skeleton hoodie; as well as a black t-shirt, a black button up, a pair of black shorts, what Josh assumes are possibly black leggings, a floral kimono, black pants somewhere between jeans and dress pants that are about four inches too short, two or three pairs of red socks, an almost comically long black tank top, and a red beanie.

Tyler’s mutation, Josh had learned, was electricity manipulation, and his ability to control his powers is limited, to say the least. Sometimes, Tyler’s able to control his powers mostly fine, though most of the time being near him feels statically charged in the best way. However, throw stress or high emotional levels into the mix, and that control slips faster than a baby deer on ice. A particularly close victory at Mario Kart results in Tyler almost shorting out the Wii in his excitement, and he’d made the kitchen light bulbs explode when Brendon wouldn’t shut up about  _ needing to have sex right now this minute guys you don’t understand _ and laughing the brighter red Tyler’s face got from embarrassment. Josh had offered to try to help Tyler learn to control his powers, but Tyler had simply said “maybe,” and dropped the subject. Josh didn’t bring it up again.

About three weeks after Tyler first arrives at DCD2, he pads across the hallway at 4AM and knocks on the door clearly marked  _ Josh D. _ , shaking and eyes brimming with tears.

“Rhuut?” Josh croaks out, tired and not really awake. Tyler ducks his head, regretting crossing the hallway. “Ty?”

“I just- I- nevermind, I’m sorry Jo-” Tyler tries to step away, but Josh, a bit more aware than he was five seconds prior, grabs the sleeve of his shirt. It was one Josh had given him, since Tyler didn’t really have his own pyjamas when he’d arrived, and although he’d gotten his own since, Josh had allowed him to keep it anyway.

“Tyler, what’s wrong?” Josh asks gently, but Tyler doesn’t answer, just makes a gesture indicating he wants a hug, and Josh complies. For a few moments, they simply stand in Josh’s doorway like that, but then Tyler pulls away so he can look at Josh.

“Can I stay?” He asks shyly, and Josh doesn’t even hesitate to say “yes.”

Tyler sits awkwardly on the edge of Josh’s bed as Josh blindly digs through his drawers for one of the blankets his mother had sent him back with three days ago, and once he’s found it, he begins building his pile of dirty clothes into a somewhat-suitable mattress. Neither of them say anything for a few moments, until Tyler realizes what Josh is doing and begins to panic a bit.

“Josh, no, no, no, don’t, I can-”

“Tyler.” He looks at Josh, doesn’t quite meet his eyes, lets them fall down to the blue bedsheets, still warm from where Josh had been sleeping not two minutes ago. There are still tears threatening the corners of his vision, and he squeezes his eyes shut. Josh notices, and a moment later Tyler feels the comforting warmth emanating from where Josh is now sitting about a foot away. “Tyler, are you okay?”

Tyler shakes his head. In his mind,  **_don’t tell him he doesn’t care don’t tell him don’t-_ **

“What’s wrong?”

“Nightmare,” Tyler says. He must sound so pathetic with all these tears in his eyes and in his voice.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Tyler shakes his head.

“Do you think you’d be able to go back to sleep?”

Tyler shakes his head.

“Do you just wanna talk?”

Tyler shakes his head. He hesitates a moment. He looks at Josh.

“Do you want me to keep talking?”

Tyler nods.

“What do you want me to talk about?”

“Something happy.”

Josh tells Tyler about his mother, and how much he loves her. He tells Tyler about his father, and his playful teasing, the nickname “firebug.” He tells Tyler about Ashley and Abbie and Jordan, and the games they used to play as kids. Josh tells Tyler every happy thing he can think of, makes little jokes referencing his favourite movies and tells Tyler how when he was seven, some girl told him he was an alien and he’d refused to acknowledge the truth that he was actually human for over a month afterwards.

Josh keeps talking for hours, and somehow they end up side by side in Josh’s bed, halfway covered by the bedsheets and kept warm by Josh’s high temperature from when he makes Tyler laugh talking about making a fool of himself in front of his first crush, a boy called Derek back when Josh was fourteen. Josh keeps talking, and on the bedside table Josh’s alarm goes off at exactly 9:16AM, but they just turn it off. Josh keeps talking until it’s well past noon, and they’ve been laying in the same positions for so long that Josh’s tailbone hurts and Tyler is getting restless, and both of them are starving because they’ve been up for over eight hours and the last time they’d eaten was dinner for Tyler, and a late night snack of Oreos for Josh. Josh keeps talking as they walk downstairs into the kitchen and make themselves Pop-Tarts, still in their pyjamas, and Tyler downs a Red Bull as if it were water.

Josh keeps talking until Tyler finally- happily, playfully- tells him to stop.

* * *

 

Tyler’s habit of locking himself in his room isn’t an everyday occurrence, but it also isn’t exceedingly rare. It had happened five days after he got to DCD2, and again the day after he’d come to Josh when he’d had that nightmare, but the third time it happens, it’s worse.

Tyler has been in his room for two days now. He hasn’t come out once, or at least not that anyone’s seen. Josh, worried, has been staying in his own room with the door open for as long as he can. He doesn’t see, or hear, Tyler leave.

Josh brings him food at mealtimes, with portions bigger than Tyler usually serves himself. (Tyler doesn’t skip meals, just eats smaller portions, and only ever takes one helping. Josh has been getting good at sneaking extra food onto Tyler’s plate when he isn’t looking, or getting Tyler to snack between meals.) He catches, at one point, Tyler’s hand reaching from the barely-there gap in the door to retrieve the plate. There’s something black covering his hand and a bit of his wrist, maybe some sort of paint. The plate is empty next to the door when Josh next notices.

Tyler emerges after four days in his room, wearing the same clothes Josh last saw him in and with remnants of black paint on not only his hands, but also on his neck and under his jaw and ears. Josh knows better than to ask about it. Instead, he asks, “are you okay?”

Tyler nods, a bit too quickly. “Yeah. Just a migraine. Don’t worry.”

Josh worries.

Tyler washes off the paint.

* * *

 

Tyler gets migraines sometimes. Josh really shouldn’t worry. He does. Most of the time, Tyler doesn’t pull a disappearing act like that when he has a migraine. He sits quietly in his room with the curtains drawn and complains to Josh in a quiet, strained voice about the pain behind his face and above his throat (Tyler’s words).

Tyler gets regular old headaches sometimes too, and half the time he’s doing whatever he and Josh usually do. The other half of the time is pretty similar to the migraines, except Tyler naps more and complains less.

Today, Tyler had told Josh after lunch that he was starting with a headache, and Josh had led Tyler back to his room to sit quietly and let Tyler nap. That’s what Tyler is doing now, curled up and protecting his head at the foot of Josh’s bed while Josh leans against the headboard and scrolls through Tumblr (he’d made a new one because he had gotten tired of blocking everyone and getting anonymous hate). One moment, Tyler is breathing evenly, and the next, he’s staring at Josh as if sizing him up, eyes burning bright crimson. There are angry red marks on his neck which weren’t there before. Josh nearly drops his phone.

“ **What do you want from him? Why are you so nice?** ” That isn’t Tyler’s voice, but it’s Tyler talking. Josh doesn’t know if this is real. He sees Tyler’s lips move but the voice is deep, almost sounds distorted. He doesn’t even register the question until Tyler shoots forward, hand around Josh’s throat. The hand also has the red marks around it.

“ **What do you want from him,** ” he asks again, angrier this time. “ **Why are you so nice?** ”

“Tyler,” Josh gasps, “can’t- need to- breathe-”

The hand leaves Josh’s throat. The face before his isn’t impressed.

“ **I’m not Tyler. He’s not here right now, he’s asleep, but I needed to get to you.** ”

“I don’t understand,” Josh says. He doesn’t. What does Tyler mean,  _ he’s not Tyler ? _

“ **Tyler is scared of me, but I just wanna protect him. He thinks about you a lot though. Tyler thinks about how cool you are, and how funny you are, and how you’re sick, which you should probably tell him you aren’t because you look just fine, and- Tyler, shut up!** ”

This is one of the strangest things Josh has ever experienced, and he was in a traveling carnival for a single day once. The person in front of him, not Tyler,  _ who is it? _ , continues to speak.

“ **I care about Tyler, a lot. I care what he thinks. Tyler thinks about you a lot, but I won’t let you hurt him, that’s why I’m here.** ”

_ I don’t know who you are, _ Josh wants to say, as well as  _ I’m not going to hurt Tyler _ , but he can’t say both so he just says the latter.

“ **What if I don’t believe you?** ” Not-Tyler asks.

“What would make you believe me?” Josh returns.

Not-Tyler asks him many, many questions, many of which are invasive, and some of which just don’t make sense.

“ **You’re not going to report Tyler to the Mutant Control Bureau?** ” Not-Tyler asks, face neutral and voice deep and hard.

“No, I’m not going to report Tyler to the MCB,” Josh answers, and this question doesn’t make sense to him because if he called the MCB he’d be reporting himself too.

Some questions lead Not-Tyler to tell Tyler to shut up, or to swear at Josh, or at Tyler, or both of them.

“ **You’re not going to use Tyler for something like his powers or for sex? Shut up, Tyler, I’m not letting you be this asshole’s bitch just because you think he’s got the sun shining out his ass.** ”

Josh has never heard Tyler swear before, but he reminds himself this isn’t Tyler. It’s still weird.

Eventually, Not-Tyler slows down on the questions, and he just looks at Josh for an uncomfortable bout of silence.

“ **You can ask me questions too, you know?** ” This is likely the most not-threatening tone Not-Tyler has used this entire time. Josh takes his chance.

“You said you weren’t Tyler. Who are you?”

" **Blurryface** ,” comes the answer.

“Blurryface?” Josh asks curiously.

“ **That’s what Tyler calls me** .”

“Why did you think I was going to hurt Tyler?”

“ **You’re new. You’re dangerous.** ” Josh tries not to indicate how much that statement hurts, especially after all the bullshit Nancy Grace and everyone else had been saying about him when his story was still front page news. What some people are still saying about him, even now. “ **Tyler has trusted the wrong people before, and they hurt him. Tyler’s the only thing I’ve got. I care about him. I don’t want to see him hurt.** ”

“Do you still think I’m going to hurt Tyler?” Josh genuinely wants to know. He’s always anxious over making a bad first impression, but with Blurryface so protective of Tyler, he doesn’t want to know what their friendship would become if he still thinks ill of Josh.

Blurryface hesitates for a moment, almost as if remembering all the answers Josh has given him. “ **No,** ” he says with finality, “ **I don’t think you’re going to hurt Tyler** .”

Josh breathes a sigh of relief, smiles.

“ **But if you do hurt Tyler, I will hurt you.** ” The threat is vague, doesn’t feel like it holds any weight, even, but Josh’s smile drops. He curls in on himself.

Blurryface closes his eyes. When they blink back open, the red has completely faded, leaving behind scared brown. Tyler is back.

He hops off Josh’s bed and runs across the hall, slamming the door to his room behind him. Josh’s heart falls.

* * *

 

Tyler doesn’t leave his room for dinner. Josh doesn’t go back upstairs. He falls asleep at his drumset.

Tyler doesn’t leave his room for breakfast. Josh knocks when he goes upstairs to shower. Tyler doesn’t answer. Josh pretends this doesn’t bother him.

Mikey takes Josh to Columbus, and Josh tells him he’ll probably stay the night. He lies and says it’s because he misses home.

Josh  ~~ doesn’t ~~ sulks as he tries to explain why he’s so upset to his mother. She doesn’t quite understand, and Josh has to explain three times, but she doesn’t really understand. She can’t give him any advice.

Josh goes into the basement with half a tub of neopolitan ice cream. He  ~~ doesn’t ~~ cries as he eats the steadily warming mess. Josh internally remarks to himself that this feels a bit like a breakup. He genuinely doesn’t know why it feel like a breakup.

Josh  ~~ doesn’t ~~ cries himself to sleep once the ice cream is gone and he feels queasy from letting it get so warm. He wakes up to his mother shaking him and gently telling him he should get to bed. He  ~~ doesn’t ~~ cries himself to sleep again in the twin bed he hasn’t used since he was twenty two in his childhood bedroom with the posters all gone and the walls long since faded.

Josh stays in bed all day, until his mother gets home and Jordan is with her and the two forced him to go downstairs and eat something. It’s even worse because his mother insists he eat something healthy. Josh just wants to drown his sorrows in more boiling ice cream, thank you very much.

He sits across from Jordan at the table and tries not to make eye contact with him or their mother. He plays with the carrots on his plate, occasionally scooping mashed potatoes into his mouth when he feels his mother’s gaze linger on him.

“Mikey stopped by earlier,” his mother says. “He told me he hadn’t heard from you. Apparently everyone was wondering where you were.”

_ Tyler wasn’t _ , he thinks, but doesn’t say anything.

Josh’s phone isn’t in his pocket, or in the basement, or in his room upstairs. It’s plugged in on his bedside table at DCD2. It’s taken him this long to notice.

Josh stays in his room upstairs again. Jordan stays too, this time. Josh wonders if Abbie or Ashley will materialize in the morning. Instead, it’s Mikey.

Mikey hugs Josh when he sees him, and when he finally lets go, they’re at DCD2. He tries to apologize, but Josh wanders off.

Josh hasn’t been up to the attic in a while. He wonders if more stuff will have materialized up there to creep him out.

On the third floor landing, walking down the hall to the next staircase, Josh catches sight of Tyler. He’s got the black paint on his hands and neck again, but his eyes are sad and brown. He spots Josh at the same time Josh spots him, and tears brim and flow down his cheeks as he rushed over.

“Josh, I’m so sorry!” Tyler sobs as he pulls the shorter man into a hug. Josh is crying now too. He clutches the sleeves of Tyler’s floral kimono and he can feel Tyler’s hands bunched into the back of his t-shirt.

They stand there for a long time, crying and apologizing and explaining. Tyler had been afraid of what Josh would say about Blurry. Josh tells him about going home and the basement and the ice cream and apologizes for worrying Tyler.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Josh mumbles against Tyler’s shoulder. Tyler asks him if he said something, but Josh is crying again and Tyler begins to fret over him, apologizing again and wiping away his tears.

Eventually, the two manage to stop crying, and it’s much later in the day when Josh realizes he’s somehow changed clothes and is now once again hugging Tyler, this time laying in Tyler’s bed. The black paint is mostly gone, just a few smudges left under Tyler’s nails and on his right wrist. His left hand cards gently through Josh’s faded yellow hair. He needs to dye it again soon.

“I’m sorry,” Josh mutters sleepily, eyes closed.

“Don’t apologize,” Tyler says softly, but Josh is already asleep.

* * *

 

They don’t talk about it in the morning, just stumble downstairs for breakfast. The silence is tense. Everyone tries not to notice.

They sit on opposite sides of the room and don’t talk or banter at all while Tyler and Josh play some old video game Josh has never heard of, starring Bugs Bunny and Taz. The background music of the game gets really annoying so they mute it. The silence is tense.

They turn off the game when Tyler complains about wandering off screen too much. He’d chosen to play as Taz, leaving Josh to play as Bugs Bunny, but Josh hadn’t been able to figure out how to switch the camera controls over to Tyler.

Josh wanders into the music room, and pounds away at his drums. One of his sticks breaks, and he almost gets a splinter while picking up the pieces, but he’s fine. He’s going to need a new set of drumsticks, though. There might still be a spare set up in his room.

Josh misses lunch because of his drumming, so he just leaves the kitchen and wanders around more. He heads back to his room, calls his mom.

“We worked it out,” he tells her, but it doesn’t feel like it. Josh’s mom is glad that he and Tyler are speaking again, and tells Josh he’s free to bring Tyler with him next time he visits, which is meant to be in three days. Josh tells her he’ll ask. He doesn’t plan to, doesn’t even know how he’d do it. This is more due to his anxiety and the tentative place his and Tyler’s friendship is at right now than being upset, though. 

A little bit after Josh gets off the phone, Tyler knocks on his door frame. Josh hadn’t closed the door when he’d come up. Josh tells Tyler he can come in. Tyler stands next to the open door.

“You’re not still mad at me, are you?” He asks. Josh shakes his head.

“No,” he says truthfully. He was never mad at Tyler. He tells him so.

“I was never mad at you either,” Tyler tells him. “I was afraid. I am afraid. Of Blurryface, and of what you’d think, and what you’d say. You haven’t said anything.”

“It’s weird. Not in a bad way. I’ve just never been in a situation like this.” Tyler looks like he wants to say something, but Josh keeps going. “I’m a bit curious, I guess, but we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

Tyler doesn’t want to. Instead, he changes the subject. “You offered to help me with my powers.”

“I did.”

“Is that offer still standing?”

“It is.”

“Will you help me with my powers, then?”

“Of course, Tyler.”

Josh gets a picture from Jordan of a cat looking disgruntled where it’s stuck in deep snow. Josh laughs, and shows the photo to Tyler, who also laughs. They begin looking up stupid cat memes and stumble upon the unflattering cat selfies Tumblr blog. Tyler’s favourite cat is one called Rascal whose front paws are stuck in the straps of a pair of flip flops, while Josh’s favorite is a cat called Shane, guarding her scratching post in a possessive hug.

Dinner rolls around, and Josh swears Tyler literally jumps for joy when he sees they’re having Taco Bell. His appetite seems endless as he practically inhales his first burrito, actually chews his second one, and then proceeds to steal about half of Josh’s nachos. Josh pretends to be annoyed, but he’s laughing too hard as Tyler continues to smack Josh’s hand from his fries, and Tyler’s laughing too.

Tyler and Josh continue laughing for most of the night.

* * *

 

For a while, Josh forgets about his mother’s request that he ask Tyler to come home with him. He shows up alone when he goes to visit three days after he and Tyler got everything sorted, and his mother silently conveys her disappointment. Every time she and Josh talk, she asks about Tyler; about when she’ll meet him, about how he’s doing with his powers (Josh had been ecstatic to tell her about how Tyler was progressing well with his help), about how he’d started letting Josh sit in when he was playing his ukulele. She also always “reminds” Josh to ask Tyler over when he next visits.

Josh doesn’t want to admit to himself that he’s scared to ask Tyler to go home with him. Lord knows Josh has told Tyler some embarrassing stories about himself, but his mother has hundreds more that Josh has either forgotten or never wants to relive, among other information that Josh doesn’t want Tyler to know about him. Josh is also afraid that his family won’t like Tyler, or that Tyler won’t like them, or that things will start off okay but then someone will say something and start a fight. Josh really does want to ask Tyler to go with him sometime, but he’s anxious and afraid.

Josh is mulling it over while he and Tyler watch a movie on his laptop when Tyler asks if he could go with Josh when he goes home in two days, effectively taking Josh by complete surprise.

“Do you think your family would mind if I went to Columbus with you?” Tyler asks. Josh had told him about being from Columbus the first time Tyler came to him after a nightmare, and later on Tyler had told Josh that he also grew up there. Josh idly wonders if part of the reason he’s asking to come with Josh is just because he misses home.

“No, they- I- do you want to come?” Josh stumbles over what he wants to say.

“Do you want me to come?”

“Of course, Tyler, why wouldn’t I want you to come? I’ve been meaning to ask you, I swear, I just-” Josh doesn’t even need to finish the sentence. Tyler knows. He’s been worrying and overthinking instead of just  _ asking _ . Josh feels his cheeks grow red as Tyler smiles that stupid smile at him.

“Aw, Jish, are you nervous?” Tyler teases, but Josh nods.

“Of course I’m nervous, Ty, I’m gonna be introducing my embarrassing parents and my annoying younger siblings to my best friend.” Josh’s parents aren’t actually that embarrassing (most of the time), and his siblings aren’t that annoying (most of the time), but Tyler really is Josh’s best friend.

“I’m your best friend?” Tyler asks, a bit dumbstruck. Josh nods slightly, his face buried in his knees.

“Course you are, Ty,” he tells him. Tyler’s arm comes to rest across Josh’s shoulders, despite the fact that Josh’s skin probably feels like an overheated laptop.

“That’s good then, since you’re my best friend too.” Tyler tells Josh shyly. Josh turns his head a bit so that he can look at Tyler, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“That’s sick,” Josh says. His smile is wide and visible now.

“So sick,” Tyler agrees, and before long, Josh is calling his mother to let her know Tyler will be joining him when he goes home.

Josh’s mother is beyond delighted to hear about this development, and she tells Josh that she’ll let everyone know. He can almost hear all the embarrassing stories she’ll be telling Tyler while they’re visiting.

Mikey drops them off in the early afternoon, Columbus time, and tells them to call him when they want to leave, or he’ll come get them after dinner. Josh’s mother, like he knew she would, is waiting for them in only a thin sweater and shivering in the cold winter air, so Josh rushes them all inside. None of them are dressed for the cold, but Josh doesn’t usually need to be. Tyler and his mother, however, do.

Abbie is already there when they enter, sitting on the couch in the living room reading. She gets up, curious about the boy her oldest brother’s brought home. Quick introductions are made, since there will be more to follow when Ashley and Jordan arrive. For how shy Tyler was when Josh first met him, though, he does well with the various other members of the Dun family.

Josh’s mom asks them to help out with dinner, and Tyler is eager to help, much more so than Josh. Instead of sending back food or whatever else she thinks he needs, Josh’s mother will be sending Tyler and Josh back with different recipes of her’s; these include the meatloaf, the wacky cake, and the recipe they’ll be making tonight, the same type of stir fry as when Josh went into the ice bath as a teenager. Josh had also brought a small pot with him, intending to take a transplant of his mother’s aloe vera plant like he’d talked to Frank about way back when.

The ice bath incident is the first story Josh’s mother tells Tyler, as they’re cutting up the veggies. Even after over a decade, there’s still that hint in her voice, giving away some of the emotions she’d felt through the ordeal as it happened.

Tyler, trying to lighten the mood a bit, says, “wow, Josh must’ve been an idiot back then.”

His mother laughs. “Yes, but we loved him anyways.” She playfully pats Josh on the cheek when he pouts exaggeratedly. Tyler, the little shit, actually  _ giggles _ .

Everyone converses throughout dinner, and Josh’s father and siblings are just as curious about Tyler as his mother is.

Josh’s dad asks Tyler what he used to do before ending up at DCD2, and Tyler says he used to coach basketball. He had been on a team throughout high school and tried to go pro, but hadn’t quite made it, so he coached instead. He had also briefly been in a band with two of his friends, though it had broken up after two years, and Tyler had gone back to basketball.

Josh’s mother asks about Tyler’s parents, since she knows he’s also from Columbus, but Tyler doesn’t answer the question, simply says she wouldn’t know them. Josh changes the subject, asking his mother about the aloe transplant he’ll be taking back with him, which leads to a discussion about flowers, which leads to a discussion of DCD2’s flower garden, and Josh’s mother asks if he could bring her some forget-me-nots for her flower pots in the spring.

Aside from the hiccup when his parents are mentioned, Tyler does well, discussing poetry with Ashley and laughing about Josh’s embarrassment with the rest of the family when stories are told. Even after all the food is gone, everyone stays seated around the table, talking and laughing. They lose track of time, and it feels like all too soon, Mikey is showing up to pick up Tyler and Josh.

Josh’s mother hands them the recipes and the aloe plant, and hugs them both, telling them to come back soon, and that Tyler is free to come by anytime. Tyler has the biggest grin on his face as he hugs Mrs. Dun, and Josh can feel a huge smile across his own face as well.

All in all, he’d deem the night a success.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may or may not have forgotten to revise this before today. Oops. That wasn't fun, I sat there for an hour trying to ignore the laptop burning directly against my left thigh.
> 
> Next update is aimed to be in seven days, on April 22nd.
> 
> As usual, I will be forever grateful to anyone who decides to leave a kudos or a comment. I see every single one, and I make it a point to always reply to every single comment.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and thank you for your patience.


	5. I Will Burn All This

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, frens.
> 
> A few warnings before we begin. This chapter contains mentions of death, mentions of stillbirth, mentions of womb twins, drugging, attempted rape, and assault. If these bother you, you can skip those parts, or skip the chapter completely.
> 
> This chapter follows Tyler, before he arrives at DCD2, so it's kind of, not really, a flashback kinda thing?
> 
> Thank you to everyone who left kudos and comments on the previous chapters, it means a lot to me to see what everyone has to say.
> 
> Chapter title from Skin & Bones by Marianas Trench.

Three weeks before Tyler Joseph turns 28, his grandfather gets into bed late one night and doesn’t wake up the next morning. At 92, the old man had been as independent as he’d been able, with family members coming to visit him at his home every day and a woman hired to come by to clean the house twice a week. The cleaning lady, Marissa, is the one who finds him dead in his bed.

The family makes the arrangements the day after the death. The funeral is simple, with a mass held in their church, and then a few words said by the side of the grave. Tyler’s grandmother had been buried in the same plot nine years earlier.

There are still some of his grandmother’s things in the house from almost a decade earlier, he discovers, as he and his family are packing things away to either throw out or donate a week later. He’s going through the boxes in the closet of the master bedroom and they’re full of pictures of the grandchildren, of Tyler’s parents’ wedding, of his aunt and uncle. There’s even an old picture, black and white and beginning to crumble in one corner from age, of his grandmother, young and swollen and pregnant, glaring at the person holding the camera.

Tyler has been going through pictures for almost an hour, since his mother had decided she wanted to keep some. There’s so many of them, about six boxes, and Tyler’s gone through all of two of them, starting only a moment ago on the third. This one holds baby pictures and ultrasounds on the same type of dark plastic x-rays are printed on. His hands land on a picture of his mother, ruffled but beautiful, smiling tearily and holding a blue bundle. Given the date on the back, it’s evident the infant she’s holding is Jay.

Madison walks into the room as Tyler is about to grab one of the ultrasound pictures, and starts to open drawers, throwing clothes into the Tupperware tote box she’d brought with her. Tyler decides to help her, and opens the next drawer, dumping socks and underwear out.

“How are the pictures going?” Madison asks, folding up a shirt she’d dropped before putting it into the bin.

“Slowly. I’ve barely started on the third box, and I just keep putting them back; I don’t know which ones Mom has already and which she doesn’t.” Tyler replies. “Plus, there are a few I kind of want to keep too.”

The bin is full, so Madison puts the cover on and hefts it away. Tyler goes back to the photos, grabbing the first one on the end. More of Jay’s first few hours in the world. He grabs the next one.

Halfway through the box, Tyler’s fingers find an ultrasound picture which confuses him. There are two blurry, identical faces in the frame, and it’s dated November 11th, 1988; twenty eight years old, exactly. Tyler doesn’t have any cousins his age who are twins. Further studying of the ultrasound leads Tyler to discover the patient name in the corner; Joseph, Kelly. Logically, this must mean that one of the faces in the picture is himself, but Tyler doesn’t have a twin.

He puts the ultrasound picture, about the size of a gum packet, into his back pocket. He’ll ask his parents about it later.

The last three boxes don’t take long to get through at all. The first is older pictures, taken in the early years of his grandparents’ marriage. One even includes Tyler’s great-grandmother, whom he’d only seen once before in a picture. His mother bears a striking resemblance to her. The second box is school photos of the grandchildren, among pictures taken at their First Communions and Confirmations and any activities they’d done growing up. Tyler’s face is found among various different team photos, holding basketballs and smiling once a year. The last box isn’t even pictures at all; it’s obituaries cut out from newspapers, inscribed with names and dates of family members and friends of his grandfather’s.

Tyler puts the six boxes back together, and somehow gets them to his mother at the kitchen table in one trip. There isn’t much left to do in the house right now, since they can’t move the furniture out for another few days. Tyler’s mother lets him go back to the family home; there’s really only Tyler, his parents, and Jay still here. They’ll meet Tyler at home, where Zack and Madison are no doubt already waiting.

The family eats dinner together, saying grace before they start. Tyler talks to his father about some coaching tips, because he’s still fairly new at coaching basketball, and could use a few pointers. The ultrasound picture in his pocket remains forgotten for the moment, though he misses the look his parents share when he tells his mother about one of the boxes holding the ultrasounds of several different grandchildren.

Zack is the first to leave, straight after dinner. Tyler teases him about rushing home to his wife, and Zack teases Tyler for still being single. Madison stays for a little while, too, before leaving. Jay is upstairs in his room, doing homework.

Tyler reaches into his pocket for his phone, and his fingers find the smooth plastic of the ultrasound picture in his pocket. He pulls it out, studies it again. He’s still confused. He walks back into the kitchen, photo in hand, to where his mother is making herself a cup of tea.

“Hey, mom,” Tyler starts, “I totally forgot. I found this earlier with the baby pictures, and I was wondering if you could explain it to me?”

Tyler’s mother looks, for lack of a better word, mortified. She shakily sets down her mug on the counter.

“Tyler, sit down at the table, please. I’ll be right back.”

Tyler does as he’s told, and a few minutes later, his mother returns, with his father behind her and a box with Tyler’s name on the front in her arms. It’s a memory box, Tyler knows, with his birth certificate and baby pictures inside. His mother pulls out several more ultrasound pictures from the box, once she’s sat down across from Tyler at the table. As she lets Tyler examine each one, lets Tyler seen the two developing forms, she begins to explain.

“When I was pregnant for the first time, we found out it was going to be twins. We were so excited, I had everything ready for the two of you…” Her voice trails. “You know how you were born early?”

Tyler nods. He does know. He was four weeks early, but otherwise healthy. He’s heard this before.

“I had gone into labour at 34 weeks. We didn’t know why, until we got to the hospital. I had had a C-section scheduled, but we ended up having it early. The first baby was so quiet; he didn’t cry, or make any noise. He was stillborn. The second did cry, screamed out like his life depended on it.”

Tyler could see where this was going. “Me?” He asked, dazed. His mother nodded. “I had a twin?”

“You had a twin,” confirms his father. “You had an identical twin brother.”

“D-did he have a name?” Tyler asks. His mother nods.

“Bennett. His name was Bennett.”

* * *

 

Tyler’s mother lets him keep the ultrasound picture. She has her own copy, and his grandfather no longer needs it. Tyler feels like  _ he _ needs it, though. Part of him feels like he’s needed this his whole life.

Part of Tyler wonders how he never even guessed this about himself. He’d always felt a little lonely, like there was something missing. There had been a girl in one of his high school classes, who’d been adopted, separated from her twin. She had described to Tyler what it felt like once; a piece of her soul, far away, inaccessible. Tyler had related a bit, but never put the pieces together. He’d told himself he could relate because he’d recently broken up with his first girlfriend around that time. Now it seems like that wasn’t true.

_ Bennett _ , his name would have been. His brother. His  _ twin _ . Tyler was a twin. Tyler had a twin.

He somehow makes it home without breaking down, but as soon as he sinks into his couch he’s sobbing. It feels like the release of something he’s held in for his entire life. Perhaps he has, he thinks, because he’s certainly been withheld something his entire life up until now.

A part of Tyler understands why his parents didn’t tell him. He probably wouldn’t have told him, either. As a small child, he wouldn’t have understood. By the age he’d have been able to understand, he’d have been too angry at having the information withheld. As an adult, it’s a lot to take in, but he knows himself, knows he probably wouldn’t have been ready to know until now.

As he sobs into his couch cushion, the air around Tyler feels charged, like anything could happen at any moment. Tyler sobs. He sobs for Bennett, and the life he never got to live. He sobs for all the things that would be different. He sobs for the best man he’ll never have, and the best friend he never got, and the life he’ll never be a part of. He sobs for what could have been, what almost was, what never got to be. He sobs for the unfortunate movement that ended something that never even began. Tyler sobs for his brother.

Tyler sobs himself to sleep, and wakes up feeling like crap. There’s tear stains on his cheeks, and his hair is sticking up in every direction. He scowls at himself in the mirror for a few minutes. He’s a wreck.

**_You’re not a wreck._ **

Tyler pretends he doesn’t hear that part of his thoughts. He drinks half a YooHoo and eats some leftover pasta and tells himself he’s a functioning adult. A functioning adult who’s going to be late for work if he doesn’t get his butt into gear.

**_Hurry, don’t be late!_ **

Once again, he pretends not to hear that thought.

* * *

 

As the days pass and Tyler’s birthday grows closer, he gets more and more stressed. He feels like he’s crazy, what with the voice in his head, and to add to his possibly losing his mind, Tyler’s apparently begun to develop mutant powers.

Since finding the ultrasound picture, the voice in his head has been talking to him regularly. Sometimes it’s helpful, reminding him to complete a task he may have forgotten or helping him find his phone when he misplaced it and Jenna was calling him, but other times, it’s the exact opposite.

Tyler is sometimes prone to insecurity, or just plain feeling shitty, and the voice inside his head doesn’t exactly help. Literally the  _ last  _ thing he needs when he’s struggling to formulate a response to an acquaintance asking his opinion on something is to be reminded how bad he is at interacting, but apparently the little voice in the back of his mind never got the memo.

Tyler had taken to calling the voice “Blurryface,” thinking it may have been his broken mind trying to reconcile the information about his twin his parents had given him a few weeks earlier.

Add his developing mutant powers into the mix, shake well, and you’ve got Tyler now, sitting on his couch and trying to even out his breathing as the shards of light bulb fall around him. There are three still lit now that the fourth has burst. Tyler doesn’t miss that it’s the one closest to him, but he’s more focused on internally groaning. He doesn’t any more spare bulbs, since this isn’t the first time he’s caused one to burst.

Aside from the light bulbs, Tyler has been trying to avoid touching anything metal, since they tend to shock him. He’s also administered shocks to his friends by accident, which none were too please about, but he could pass off as static electricity, especially since his hair was standing up a lot from the charges lately. Tyler had also accidentally almost fried his phone, but that one wasn’t so bad, since it saved him having to dig out his charger for a little while longer.

Given how stressed he’d been recently, Mark and Jenna had decided that what Tyler  _ absolutely _ needed right now was to go out and socialize. His birthday had been the previous day, so Tyler was now officially 28, single, and awkward. His actual birthday had been spent with his family, though it had been a bit more melancholy for him this year with the knowledge that he should have been sharing it with a twin who’d never gotten the chance to see any of their birthdays. He also noticed this melancholiness had spread to his parents, but part of Tyler wondered if it had always been like this for them and he’d just never noticed. Zack, Jay, and Madison didn’t know about Tyler’s twin, though, since Tyler and his parents had agreed to keep it from them unless they asked. Tyler doubted they would, seeing how long it took him to do so, and he’d had the ultrasound picture to get him wondering beforehand. His siblings, on the other hand, had no reason to suspect anything.

Tyler groaned as Jenna nudged his side. They were at a bar, sitting on stools and watching the bartender pour drinks for other patrons. Tyler had barely sipped at his first beer, still held in his hand even as it grew warmer, but Jenna was halfway through her second drink. Mark had wandered off some time ago when Tyler wasn’t paying attention.

“What, Jenna?” Tyler grumbled, when Jenna nudged him again, more sharply this time. She pointed to a guy sitting not too far from them, who averted his eyes when Tyler followed where Jenna was pointing.

“I think he’s interested,” Jenna giggled. Tyler sighed and turned to give the guy a better look.

He looked to be of average height, though he had a bigger build; the guy looked like he spent as much time at the gym as he could. His hair was long, and brown, tied back in a ponytail that curled slightly over his back. He also had a beard and mustache, both the same brown as his hair. He couldn’t have been much older than Tyler, maybe 30 at most. He had on a black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, despite the cold weather, and it had a logo for some band Tyler had never heard of before. He seemed to sense Tyler staring at him, and looked back, smirking at him. Before Tyler knew it, the guy slid into the seat next to him, the one Jenna had previously occupied. Jenna had disappeared, probably to give Tyler and the guy some space.

“Hey, I’m Jeremy,” the guy introduced. Tyler shook his hand a bit awkwardly.

“Tyler,” he told Jeremy. He smiled back at Tyler.

“Well, Tyler, forgive me for being a bit forward, but could I buy you a drink?”

“Oh, uh, sure,” Tyler agreed. Jeremy smiled at Tyler again before heading back towards where he’d previously sitting, talking with the bartender. Tyler’s eyes wavered over to the crowd in the bar, trying to find Jenna. There was no sign of the blonde anywhere. The same went for Mark.

**_They’re probably not too far away,_ ** Blurryface said.  **_They wouldn’t leave you alone in an unsafe situation._ **

Part of Tyler knew Blurryface was probably right. The other part wondered, not for the first time, when Blurryface’s antics had grown normal for Tyler.

Before Tyler could get too lost in his thoughts, Jeremy appeared again, handing Tyler an open bottle of beer. He took it, shooting Jeremy a small smile, and took a swig. He probably should have been more worried about the fact it was already opened, but the bartender had handed Tyler an open bottle like this when he’d ordered his first drink, so he saw no cause for alarm. Jeremy began asking Tyler about what a guy like him was doing sitting alone at the bar on a Friday night, and Tyler took a few more swigs of his drink, downing it much faster than the first.

By the time he was halfway through his drink and trying to explain that he’d come here with friends, he was finding difficulty with forming coherent thought. Tyler wasn’t a lightweight, though he didn’t drink often; he knew something was off. Unfortunately, he couldn’t even form the words to express what was happening to him. His eyes drooped, and he leaned forward against the bar. An arm wrapped around his waist, leading him into the bathroom.

Tyler knew, logically, what would happen next. Jeremy had spiked his drink with something, and he’d have his way with Tyler while he was too fucked up to protest or fight back. He was scared, unable to defend himself, didn’t have many options. He wanted to scream, to run, to go get Jenna or Mark or the bartender or one of the club’s security guys. He wanted to punch Jeremy in the face, or in the gut, or in the groin, and make a break for it. He wanted to shock him with his powers, or teleport away, or find out this was all a dream and wake up safe in his apartment, in his bed that needed to have the sheets changed, with clothes all over the floor and questionable dents in the drywall. Unable to do any of those things, Tyler chose to let himself go, try to ignore it, forget it happened. The faster this whole ordeal was over, the faster he could repress like a motherhugger and forget this whole night. Instead of forcefully blocking out every sensation though, something else unexpected happened.

Tyler could have sworn his eyes had been shut, but now he was seeing through them as if nothing were wrong. He couldn’t feel anything, physically. It was as if he were floating, untethered, unhinged. His limbs didn’t exist, or if they did he couldn’t feel or control them. He couldn’t feel any part of his body, for that matter. Everything was non-existent.

“ **What do you think you’re doing to him?!** ” An unfamiliar yet familiar voice demands, deep and distorted. Jeremy looks alarmed.

“What the fuck!” He screeches. A fist connects to his face, covered in deep, bruising marks that Tyler knows weren’t there before. Jeremy staggers back from the impact, blood running down his face from where his nose had been injured, possibly even broken. Another hit lands in his face, against his teeth this time. Jeremy spits more blood.

“ **You won’t fucking touch him!** ” The oh-so-familiar voice cries again, aiming a third hit. This one is dodged, but the fourth swing lands squarely against Jeremy’s back, between his shoulder blades. He crumples, out of breath, and whatever entity that’s taken Tyler’s body for a swing maneuvers above him, landing more punches while Jeremy writhes beneath them, trying to turn from his stomach onto his back. Eventually he succeeds, but the punches begin to land against his stomach, knocking the wind out of him again. He continues to struggle against the entity that’s taken over from Tyler, but he’s overpowered in this moment.

The final punch lands against Jeremy’s crotch, and he curls in on himself, whimpering and out of breath. The entity controlling Tyler’s body spits on him, leaves him there as he bolts for the exit. As he stands, Tyler catches a flash of himself in the mirror. It looks like he’s been strangled, the same marks on his hands visible on his neck, and his eyes are glowing red. But then again, the aren’t exactly  _ his _ eyes right now.

By the time Tyler can register anything else, he’s standing, dizzy and crumpling, in his apartment. His shoes and jacket are on the floor beside him, and the door behind him is locked. His phone pushes against his hip as he leans forward in a bout of nausea and throws up. Somehow, he manages to find the energy to drag himself onto his couch before he passes out.

* * *

 

The next morning, Saturday, Tyler wakes up and barely makes it into the bathroom before he pukes again. He feels like shit, and can barely hold down the water he drinks once he’s rinsed out his mouth. He doesn’t manage to keep the two saltine crackers down, though, and throws up again.

As the day progresses, he manages to keep a little bit of food down, some soup his mother had made which he’d kept frozen in a ziplock bag in his freezer. He still feels like shit, though, and calls his father to let him know he won’t be making it to the basketball game the team he coaches has tonight. When asked, Tyler says he thinks he’s coming down with something, and manages to cancel the practice he’s supposed to coach for on Monday too. The perks of being the principal's son, even after graduating, Tyler supposes.

He’s got texts from Jenna and Mark asking where he went and did he enjoy himself? Tyler ignores them, doesn’t respond, doesn’t tell them what happened. He doesn’t think anyone would believe him, and that’s without adding the fact that the entity in his head, Blurryface, had apparently saved his behind from getting assaulted.

Tyler mopes and represses and ignores for a week, but the Monday after the week is up he decides he’s being too pathetic and drags his butt to work. After all, it’s the last full week of school before the students go on Christmas break, and the last Monday practice before the break as well. He’s been locked in his apartment all week, ignoring his phone buzzing on his bed and only getting up for food or the bathroom. Now that he’s come out of his radio silence, though, everyone seems to want to see him.

Chris has texted him asking if he’s up for a jam session tomorrow night, because despite the fact that their band fell apart about five years ago they still play together sometimes. Jenna insists on hanging out right away, though Tyler knows as long he visits her before the week is up he’s fine. Mark was also wondering if he’d be willing to help move some of his film equipment into his new place, since Mark’s lease had just expired and he was moving into a new apartment. The final invitation Tyler has regarding going out and socializing is from his mother, asking if he feels well enough to come over and help decorate the Christmas tree. With a few minutes to spare as he waits for his bus, Tyler allows himself to answer his texts.

Tyler tells his mother that yes, he feels fine, and yes, he’d be delighted to go over to decorate the tree with the rest of the family. It’s a tradition which he looks forward to every year. Next, he messages Chris, “ _ maybe another time, busy, _ ” and proceeds to confirm with Mark when he needs to be over. Finally is Jenna, who is apparently so glad to hear from him that she offers to bring him Taco Bell when he gets out of practice, which is something she never does. He accepts her offer without hesitation.

When Jenna comes over, she asks him about Friday night, and Tyler lies, tells her that he and Jeremy just talked for a bit but that it didn’t work out. She lets the subject drop, and shows Tyler the latest picture of her niece. Part of Tyler wants to bring the original topic of subject back, to tell Jenna what really happened, but he’s scared. Things like that aren’t supposed to happen to people like him, shouldn’t happen at all really, but it almost did. Not to mention that assuming she wouldn’t turn on him for being so stupid, she’d probably ask if he went to the police and how did he get out of the situation and is he sure he’s okay and just too many questions Tyler really doesn’t feel like answering. So, he looks at pictures of Jenna’s niece and asks about her plans for Christmas and promises to not disappear for a week again, and before he knows it it’s almost 11PM, and Jenna’s hugging him before she leaves, and then he’s alone again in his mediocre apartment, half-wishing he’d said something, anything, everything about what’s been going on with him over the past month.

The rest of the week passes by quickly, as he helps Mark move his things, and coaches the two final practices before break, and before he knows it, he’s in his parents’ basement hunting for the good tree lights. With a triumphant grin, he finds them, and is almost stupidly antsy as he weaves the coils of lights around his neck like a large plastic scarf and begins to rush back upstairs. His left hand is carrying the plug of one of the sets of lights, and it finds a space in his hand where the two prongs rest snugly between three of his fingers. As if sensing the presence of ungrounded electrical equipment, his fingers spark, and he stops abruptly halfway up the basement stairs wrapped almost comically in Christmas lights glowing brighter than multicoloured suns. Then, seemingly all at once, they glow brighter, and it’s a loud pop, and then there are shards of coloured plastic all over the steps.

_ Crap! _ Thinks Tyler. There’s no way he can explain this one to his mom. He rushes back down the stairs and grabs the second best box of lights, leaving behind the three coiled sets of burst ones. When his mother asks, he tells her these were the only ones he could find, and she settles. They’re the same as the other sets, just slightly older, so it doesn’t matter all too much. The tree still looks amazing once it’s decorated.

Tyler, for the most part, manages to avoid getting too close to anything electrical for the rest of the evening, with the only exception being when he accidentally caused the radio to static. His mother blamed it on the weather outside, however, and for once Tyler was grateful to live in a place that got absolutely buried in snow during the winter. Aside from the radio, though, there are no more incidents, and before Tyler knows it, it’s late and he’s heading home. His car radio is staticking beside him, and he feels overcharged. He doesn’t recall ever feeling this antsy before, save for maybe right before he used to go onstage and perform his songs, but really, that was so long ago now that he’s a bit surprised he remembers the feeling.

Somehow, he gets into his apartment without the door handle zapping him back, but he does get a shock from his keys as he puts them down. It stings, worse than usual, and he pulls his hand back quickly, bringing it against his side.

It’s a bit surprising how many household items can shock you when you’re as charged as Tyler feels, and likely is right now. Door handles are obvious. The TV screen, dusty and static, also delivers a nasty zap. Tyler avoids getting too close to electrical outlets but the lights are on before he can even flip the switch up. He’s a bit afraid to remove his phone from his pocket, because if ever he’s been likely to fry it, it’s right now.

Tyler falls into bed still dressed in his jeans and t-shirt, skeleton hoodie unzipped but the hood up. He tosses and turns, barely sleeps, and when he wakes up in the morning to his phone buzzing violently with a phone call, he still feels as charged as the night before. There’s too much energy, too much static, too much voltage. He feels like he could power the entire apartment complex for a month on his own.

Pulling his phone out of his pocket isn’t as bad of an idea as it seemed until his fingers fall over the charging port, and damn Apple for leaving the port completely open and uncovered. The phone in his hand is nothing more than a hunk of plastic and glass now, completely useless to Tyler.

Tyler tries to continue with his day, but for the most part it doesn’t take his mind off of this new development with his powers. He shocks himself whenever he tries to grab his fork, he breaks a tile in his kitchenette when he drops the pot he was going to use to make himself some pasta, and the leg of the table periodically gives him a jolt as he bounces his leg up and down. By the afternoon, Tyler has been zapped more times than he feels is probably safe, and he’d given up on trying to make himself pasta, instead digging into a small, single-serve of vanilla ice cream with a disposable plastic fork because he couldn’t find any spoons. He’s frustrated, he can barely even more without getting shocked, and of course with Blurryface asking if he’s okay every two seconds, he can’t even think straight. Not even caring if the ice cream will stain his carpet, Tyler lets it drop, curling up and letting the tears fall.

Every emotion from the past two weeks comes flooding out, and with it the buzzing electricity that had seemingly taken residence inside of Tyler after he’d found out about his twin all those weeks ago. Everything that isn’t surge-protected sparks and overloads around him. Lightbulbs rain their glass down around him. The TV fizzles with static and dust. The carbon monoxide alarm straight up explodes, scattering bits of plastic around him and leaving the grounding pegs stuck in their outlet.

A sob falls through Tyler’s lips and he lets it, and following it are more sobs. He thinks, and he feels, raw and gross and heavydirtyuglywrong-. The air around Tyler is dry and flashes of light, little sparks and big sparks, rain around him, some dissipating and some threatening to light the entire room with something akin to fire, if not the real thing. It’s like sitting in a lightning storm, but there’s no rain, and the closest thing to thunder he’s got are the sounds falling from his mouth like baby teeth. First he sobs for what he’s being denying, what he’s been suppressing. Then, he sobs because he can, because he’s letting himself, because it drowns out Blurryface’s concerned buzzing. Lastly, he sobs for his fears, the power thrumming uncontrolled and unchecked, and he realizes that he’s going to have to learn how to control this or he’ll have to disappear and get to somewhere isolated and alone and safe, because he isn’t, he can’t be close to people, can’t be around, he can’t-

Tyler makes a split second decision that he’ll probably come to regret later, but his mind is still full of heavydirtyuglygross emotion and it’s drowning out the thoughts, both Tyler’s and Blurryface’s. So, Tyler stumbles into his bedroom, wearing yesterday’s clothes and today’s tears, and packs himself a small bag of essentials. Clothes, cash, an unused notebook, some pens. The gum-packet ultrasound that started this whole mess. As an afterthought, he grabs his ukulele as he stumbles back out into his living room, shoving on his favourite shoes and walking down the street in silent, turbulent emotion.

The world is dull when he’s seeing it through the eyes of a skeleton hoodie and tear-stains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the next chapter, let's aim for Saturday, May 13th.
> 
> If you were fine to read this chapter, feel free to leave kudos or comments, I know it got pretty heavy at some parts. Also, if I miss some things I'd be better off tagging, let me know.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and thank you for your patience.


	6. T's Uncrossed and I's Undotted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, frens.
> 
> This chapter continues from where the last left off, so we're once again going back in time a bit to follow our precious Tyjo.
> 
> Warning for a nightmare scene a bit later in the chapter. It gets kinda bad.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who left kudos and comments on the previous chapters. You make all the struggles for wording and constant annoyance at myself for getting distracted worth it.
> 
> Chapter title from Holding On To You by Twenty One Pilots.

Tyler had a decent amount of money on him when he left his home and his family and everything he knew, but that cash wasn’t lasting as far as he’d hoped it would.

A Greyhound tickets brings him to a border town in Maine, but since he doesn’t have his passport with him, he can’t really cross into Canada like he’d hoped to. He catches a night in the shittiest, cheapest motel he can find, and that’s half his cash gone on just the bus ticket and the room. He steals a free bagel from the motel lobby before he leaves.

He doesn’t think he can afford to buy another bus ticket if he wants to keep eating, and since sustenance is more important than travel in the grand scheme of survival, Tyler takes to walking along the highway with his thumb sticking out.

On his first day, he meets a snowbird couple heading down to Florida who let him stay with them until Orlando. They let him crash in hotel rooms with them, and always insist on paying for his food, all the while chatting him up about their granddaughter who’s apparently “in his age range”. The couple is nice enough, and they offer to let him stay with them until he can get on his feet again, but he feels like he’s overstayed his welcome and wanders off when they’re gassing up in Orlando.

From Orlando, he walks along the highway again, and by the time he reaches Tallahassee four days later, he’s acquired a bit more cash from kind strangers. He still doesn’t have enough money to risk buying a bus ticket, though. It’s not like he knows where he’s going anyways.

Christmas passes Tyler by without him realizing it, but he spends New Year's Day on a Tallahassee street corner strumming away on his ukulele. He makes about 15$ in change and a five dollar bill some teenager with a kind smile and magenta-purple-pink hair hands him as he’s taking a break from his strumming. The next day, he eats Taco Bell and tries not to feel too gross.

By mid-January, surrounded by gossip of a pyrokinetic incident in LA and spending his days sitting on random Louisiana streets playing his ukulele in hopes of getting a meal for the day, Tyler begins to regret leaving, but has had plenty of time to think of why he left. Part of it is an underlying fear of losing control and outing himself as a mutant, as is often heard about in the media these days. He doesn’t know how anyone he knows would react to him being a mutant; most of them are plenty open-minded, but there’s a difference between talking about a hypothetical mutant versus finding out your friendbrotherson is literally a mutant. Then, there’s also the issue of Blurryface.

Blurry doesn’t feel as much like an issue anymore to Tyler, though. He was always there, in the back of Tyler’s mind, or almost always, and Tyler could count on Blurry to talk with him, or think with him, or whatever it qualified as, if he felt lonely or bored. Through their thought-conversations, Blurry had begun to get better at interacting with Tyler, though there were still some things he didn’t quite grasp. There was still no sign of where Blurry had come from, though, or who or what he was. When Tyler had asked if he had a name, Blurry had responded that the only one he’d ever gotten was the moniker Tyler had stuck him with. Tyler had then offered to give Blurry a different name, but apparently he was happy enough to be called Blurryface, so they left it at that. They had both been rather quiet and less chatty for the rest of that day.

Between struggling to collect money with his ukulele and lyrics he’d written in his parents’ basement when he was seventeen, and think-talking with Blurry to keep sane, Tyler somehow stumbles upon a mutant hangout in Lake Charles, and he learns about the safe haven network. There are safe havens located in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, but Tyler doesn’t feel like backtracking, so he looks at other places. One on the outskirts of Austin, Texas; Albuquerque and Las Cruces in New Mexico; Denver, Colorado; St. George and Salt Lake City, Utah; Tucson, Arizona; Summerlin South in Nevada, just south of Vegas; and finally, Los Angeles, California. A quick Google search tells Tyler that of those states, Colorado and California are the most mutant-friendly of the bunch. A guy in the hangout, Alex or something, tells Tyler that the smaller safe haven happens to be the one in Denver, when Tyler makes it clear he’d rather make it somewhere with fewer people around.

The hangout’s owner is kind enough to let Tyler spend the night, and even makes him some food. Tyler hasn’t had anything home cooked in a while, and has to force himself not to wolf it all down as soon as the plate is given to him. Sleeping on an actual, comfortable mattress is something Tyler hasn’t done in a while either, and it’s amazing. He isn’t even aware of falling asleep until he wakes up the next afternoon, having slept for almost thirteen hours. His host is kind and offers to let him stay a second night, so Tyler can leave at a decent time of day, but Tyler’s gone before she finishes her sentence. He leaves her with a hug and what small amount of cash he feels he can spare to reimburse her for her kindness.

It takes Tyler another week to get to Denver, and he waits all day at the designated meetup spot for no one to show up. He waits all day again the next day, and the day after that, but on the fourth day he realizes it’s unlikely anyone will show up.

**_They’re coming, Tyler_ ** , Blurry tries to reason, naively at that.  **_Why wouldn’t they? They promised to meet you here._ **

_ Something bad might’ve happened, though _ , he thinks back.

**_Like what?_ **

_ A lot. Don’t worry about it, Blurry. We’ll go somewhere else. _

It doesn’t stop Blurry from worrying. He won’t stop fussing and asking questions. Tyler does his best to act as if Blurry’s worrying isn’t making Tyler worry, too.

* * *

 

February breaks and Tyler is wandering along the I-10 in California, heading steadily towards Los Angeles. It’s about 60 degrees out, which is honestly better than whatever Tyler imagines the weather in Columbus is like right now. To him, 60 degrees is May or June back home. He doesn’t even need his hoodie for most of the day.

He’s looking for a specific mutant hangout this time around, rather than just meandering through. He remembers what that guy in Lake Charles had told him about an LA safe haven, and if he can find the hangout he can find the haven. Part of Tyler wishes he still had a phone. He’d be able to use the maps app for directions. As it is, he’s stumbling around with no sense of where he’s going. It’s not like he can just stop someone on the street and ask for directions. He’s not even technically _ in _ LA yet.

Daybreak turns into afternoon before he gets into town, officially. After that, it’s a game of not looking too suspicious. He’s aware of how dirty he looks, how disheveled, how starved. The latter is just a bit of an unfortunate fact about Tyler rather than a result of his month-and-a-bit of running through the country; Tyler’s of average height and has a healthy body weight but he’s always resembled a pole with how lanky he is. His mother would sometimes tease him, telling him he was all limbs and nothing else.

Tyler pushes those thoughts away. He won’t be seeing his mother for a long time, if ever again. Thinking about her will only lead to missing her, and missing the rest of his family, and missing his friends. This is not what Tyler needs right now. What Tyler needs right now is cash, and directions to where he’s going, and probably some food and a shower would actually be a good idea too. Unfortunately, Tyler’s lost, broke, and alone in a city of almost four million, with nothing but his backpack and ukulele. 

(The ukulele is getting more and more tempting to sell by the day, but Tyler doesn’t know where he’d even go to sell it. It’s also his only current source of income anyways, so it would be more useful to keep it in the long run.)

The problem with cities is that they can take forever to navigate through, especially on foot. He’s been exploring LA for three days already and hasn’t managed to find any mutant safe spaces, though he does find the Los Angeles Mission on his second day and is able to stay there. He’s glad to be able to count on the meals and shelter provided there, even if it is only temporary. He’s also able to shower there, and he feels less discouraged now that he’s clean and fed.

On Tyler’s fourth day in LA, he finds what appears to be an abandoned coffee shop nestled in a back alley he’s accidentally wandered into. He’d probably have wandered back away if he hadn’t heard noise from inside, and he steps up to the window to try to see inside. The window has that kind of tint on it which prevents from being able to see inside, though, so Tyler tries the door while Blurry tells him to just leave it.

It feels almost cliché to say that it’s like stepping into a mutant-only word, but that’s what it feels like to Tyler. Inside the abandoned coffee shop exterior is a thriving mutant hangout, just like he’d been searching for. It also appears to be running like a coffee shop, which Tyler supposes should have been obvious.

The mutant version of a Starbucks that Tyler had wandered into had people with visible and invisible mutations to be found all around, though that’s not to say the place was packed. Including Tyler and the two baristas, there are about a dozen people.

One barista, making coffee with evident speed-based powers, catches sight of Tyler gaping at his surroundings, and quickly finishes what she’s doing to walk over. She has too look up at Tyler, who’s a good six inches taller than her, but it makes her no less intimidating as she stares at Tyler. He knows he doesn’t look like much even on a good day, and he’s still so unused to being part of this world; it makes sense she might think he’s here for all the wrong reasons.

“Can I help you with something?” She asks, voice friendlier than Tyler was expecting. He blinks, and suddenly he realizes that the girl in front of him isn’t so intimidating.

“Oh, uh, I- uh.” His sentence kind of dies down a bit. He’s standing in the doorway of a mutant coffee shop in the same clothes he’s been wearing for almost a week, with no money and only half an idea of what he’s actually looking for, not to mention he can feel eyes on him as he keeps gaping at those around him. He wishes he could disappear into the wall, or the floor, or into thin air. Anything to get the eyes off of him.

The barista seems to be able to tell he’s uncomfortable, and gently coaxes him into a back room, away from all the people. “It’s alright, don’t worry,” she tells Tyler as he apologizes for needing to come back here. He has a feeling that bringing people back here isn’t an everyday occurrence. 

“Hey, what’s your name?” The girl asks gently. She’s got a comforting hand on Tyler’s right forearm.

“Tyler,” he tells her. She smiles warmly at him.

“Nice to meet you, Tyler. I’m Hayley!” She chirps brightly. “You looked a bit lost back there. Were you looking for something specific, or did you just wander in by accident?”

“I wandered in,” he tells her, “but I was looking for a place like this.” Hayley nods.

“Are you trying to get into a haven?” The question is more of a statement, as if Hayley has been in this situation before and already knows the answer. She doesn’t react when Tyler nods his affirmation to the question, though.

“Alrighty, Tyler. You stay here, and I’ll be right back. I’m going to make a phone call or two, and hopefully we can get you situated.” Tyler doesn’t see a problem with this, so Hayley gives his arm another pat and walks back into the main area of the shop.

The number is easy and familiar for Hayley to dial, and an answer is had before the third ring.

“ _ Hello? _ ” 

“Hey, Patrick. How’s life? Pete pop the big question yet?” Patrick sputters at Hayley’s teasing, but they both know it’s good natured. Besides, Hayley thinks, they wouldn’t even need to ask each other, they’d just mutually agree that they’re engaged. They’ve certainly been together long enough that no one would be surprised if they tied the knot tomorrow, or at any time for that matter. Hayley’s even heard from Brendon that there were bets about when the wedding would inevitably happen. She may or may not have been participating in these bets. It was the biggest betting pool among their group of friends, closely followed by bets of when Frank and Gerard would finally stop being so oblivious.

“ _ Hayley, I haven’t heard from you in forever! Why the sudden need for contact? Not that I mind, of course. _ ”

“Got someone for your little gang at DCD2. He stumbled into the shop looking lost, and I’ve got him hidden away in a back room now. Think he’ll be permanent.”

“ _ No kidding? This’ll be the second since the new year started, _ ” Patrick mused.

“What? When were you planning to tell me you’d gotten some fresh meat?” Hayley asked, voice picking up a bit. If Patrick didn’t know better, he’d say she were upset at not being told, and while she partly was, it was mostly just an act.

“ _ Well, when were you planning on telling me you’d gotten a new number? _ ” Patrick shot back. Whoops.

“Touché.”

“ _ Okay, but in all seriousness, Josh got here about a month ago. He’s pyrokinetic, originally from Ohio but he got caught at that concert. You’ve probably heard the whole story half a dozen times on the news. _ ” And now that Patrick mentioned it, Hayley knew exactly who he meant.

“Your newby is Joshua Dun?!” She asked. The incredulity in her voice was genuine. “Dude, how?!”

“ _ I happened to be at the wrong place at the right time. Now, what about yours? _ ”

“Like I said, he just wandered in looking lost. All he told me was that his name is Tyler and that he’s looking to get into a haven. He can’t be much older than I am, and he’s so fragile looking. I think he might have been a late bloomer, though.”

“ _ Yikes. Do you think you can keep him there long enough for me to pick him up? I can be there in an hour, tops. _ ”

“I doubt he’ll be going anywhere, but yeah, I can keep him here. See you soon, Patrick.”

“ _ See you soon, Hayley.  _ ”

* * *

 

It takes Patrick just under  _ two  _ hours to make it to the coffee shop to get Tyler, and it’s a lot harder than Hayley anticipates to keep Tyler there. He gets antsy half an hour into the waiting game, claiming he needs to get his things from the Mission, but Hayley reassures him that Patrick will take him to get them when he arrives. After forty-five minutes, Hayley gets Tyler some food. He doesn’t want to take it, doesn’t have any money, but he’d mistakenly let Hayley know he hadn’t eaten and she refuses to let him leave without lunch. She gives him a sandwich from the coffee shop, which is pretty good considering the type of food usually found at coffee shops, and allows Tyler to take a cookie from the front once he’s finished the sandwich. Tyler stays in the front of the coffee shop now that there aren’t as many people.

The coffee shop has a piano in one corner, an upright with artistically painted scribbles all over it in vibrant colours. It’s a bit out of tune, but Tyler doesn’t mind. It’s been a long time since he’s even seen a real piano, let alone played one. It keeps him distracted for a bit, trying to remember chords and notes to songs that were either his or someone else’s. He surprises himself by remembering how to play Trees, even after all these years.

Tyler’s experimenting with a short melody using F3, G3, B3, and C4 when the bell above the coffee shop door sounds. Coming inside is a man with a fedora and black-rimmed glasses, whom Hayley immediately rushes to hug. He hugs her back and greets her with a smile as she begins leading him over to where Tyler is.

“Tyler, this is Patrick, the unofficial leader of safe haven DCD2.” Hayley explains. Patrick reaches a hand out to shake, and Tyler takes it, concentrating on trying not to shock him. He thankfully succeeds.

“Nice to meet you,” he tells Patrick quietly, once they’ve let go of each other’s hands.

Patrick asks Tyler some questions, but doesn’t force Tyler to answer if he doesn’t want to. Some questions are too invasive for Tyler, or he just doesn’t want to answer. He does tell Patrick his full name, his age, that he’s from Columbus, and that his mutation had only manifested the previous November.

“Do you have any idea what may have triggered the manifestation?” Patrick asks gently.

Tyler feels bad for lying and saying, “my grandfather died.” It just feels too wrong to try to say it was because he found out his twin had died at birth. Some days it still hit Tyler that,  _ oh yeah _ , he was a twin.

If Patrick senses Tyler’s lie, he doesn’t say anything about it. He asks Tyler a few more questions, and finally they’re off. Tyler is hesitant but eventually gets into Patrick’s car, and as promised by Hayley, their first stop is the Los Angeles Mission to pick up Tyler’s things.

The drive to DCD2 takes a while, especially with the LA traffic. The ride isn’t entirely silent, because Patrick has some movie soundtrack CD running, but the volume is faint, just background noise. At a red light, Patrick turns his head slightly towards Tyler.

“If you have any questions, you’re free to ask, y’know?”

Tyler thinks about this for a while, and by the time they get on the road leading to the outskirts of LA, he’s finally thought of something to ask.

“What kind of powers do the mutants at your safe haven have?”

Patrick smiles lightly. “They have all kinds of powers. No one at DCD2 has yet had the same mutation, and all of us have varying degrees of control. For example, my boyfriend Pete,” Patrick’s eyes light up, “can chose when to move at normal speed and when to use his super speed. Meanwhile, Brendon has little to no control over his chaos magic, even though he practices nearly every day with his powers. What about you?”

“My mutation is electrical manipulation,” Tyler says, “but I’m not very good with my powers yet.” He ducks his head after the second statement, a bit embarrassed.

_**Y** _ **_ou only got your powers three months ago!_ ** Blurry reminds Tyler,  **_it’s only natural you wouldn’t have very much control._ **

Patrick’s next statement mirrors Blurry’s, but he adds on, “but there’s probably someone at DCD2 who could help you learn.”

For the rest of the drive, Patrick tells Tyler about DCD2, and the mutants living there. A few anecdotes and funny stories get thrown in too, which lightens the mood and makes Tyler feel less tense.

They get to DCD2 in mid-afternoon, and Patrick leads Tyler inside, continuing on his explanations of the other residents.

“Most of us stay here almost 24/7, but you can leave whenever you want to. There are also some occasions where everyone or almost everyone is out. Mikey Way is a teleporter, so once a month or so he takes everyone outside DCD2 to see family and friends. He and his brother Gerard are gone to visit their parents in Jersey right now, and they brought Josh with them. Josh has been here about a month now, so he’s pretty new here too. He’s originally from Columbus but he got stuck here for safety reasons. You probably heard all about it a few dozen times by now, it was big news what happened to him.”

The only news Tyler has been caught up on in the past month and a half was that Trump’s inauguration was upstaged by the Women’s March the next day, and he only knows that because he played his ukulele for some of the marchers in Lake Charles when it happened. He walked with them for a little bit too, but not far.

As Patrick leads Tyler into DCD2’s kitchen, he notices three people there. Two of them have brown hair, and enough of a faint resemblance for Tyler to wonder if they’re brothers. The third has brightly dyed yellow hair, making him stand out. Tyler shrinks back behind Patrick a bit.

“Oh, hey. When did you guys get back?” Patrick asks the group.

“Just now,” chirps one of the brothers, an inch shorter and with longer hair, “Josh’s mom sent cake!”

“Who’s this?” Asks the other brother, gesturing at Tyler, who’s trying even harder to hide behind Patrick.

“Oh, this is Tyler. Tyler, this is Gerard,” the chirpy man waves to Tyler, “his brother Mikey,” a nod from the taller brother, “and Josh,” Patrick points out the yellow-haired man.

For a few moments, an awkward silence befalls the group, before Josh speaks up. “It’s nice to meet you, Tyler.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Tyler mumbles. He tries to burrow into his hoodie, cringing at his awkwardness.

“Well,” begins Patrick, “I’m gonna continue showing Tyler around. See you guys later.”

Patrick begins to lead Tyler away, and he steals one last glance back at the other three. Josh looks almost surprised when he meets Tyler’s gaze one last time.

* * *

 

Tyler doesn’t sleep very well as a general rule, but the first few nights at DCD2, not even the end of the world could have woken him up. Even at the Mission the beds weren’t this nice, and it’s a luxury Tyler had taken for granted having his own room.

After the third night, he begins to fall back into his normal sleeping pattern, which involves staying up late when his thoughts won’t stop, sometimes writing down his more profound anecdotes and thoughts, and hoping he actually makes it the rest of the night without waking up from a nightmare once he does manage to drift off.

Logically, Tyler knows everyone is prone to nightmares at some point in their life. It’s a natural thing. Tyler might just be ~~slightly~~ _a lot_ more prone to it than normal. For years, he had a fear of dying; it translated into many nightmares about dying in painful, horrible ways after an unfulfilling life, among other incarnations. Tyler still has that fear of death, but it doesn’t come up in his nightmares as often. Since discovering the truth about his twin and the manifestation of Blurryface, however, Tyler’s nightmares have taken a new form.

It always starts with Tyler, face to face with himself. Except, it’s not himself. The doppelganger has the same height, same build, same  _ everything _ \- everything but facial features. The doppelganger’s facial features are always fuzzy, out of focus,  _ blurry _ . The only things Tyler can make out are the doppelganger’s eyes, an eerie, almost glowing blood red. They stand there, the doppelganger’s eyes burning into Tyler’s, arms limp and back straight.

In Tyler’s hands is what appears to be a rope. It’s warm and thrumming under his fingertips, about two feet long, blue and white and looking slightly like a marshmallow rope. Without the order from his brain, his hands move, and the rope wraps around the doppelganger’s neck once, squeezing. Hands go up to grasp at the rope, but the expression remains the same. No sound escapes Tyler’s counterpart. The rope wraps around again, this time pinning hands in place, tangling with them. The more Tyler wants to let go, untangle the rope, do anything but what he’s being forced to, it goes on. The areas where the rope is wrapped around turn red and ugly, and the veins of the eyes hemorrhage and burst, leaving petechiae in their wake.

Tyler can feel his doppelganger’s death. Their eyes slip shut, and the thrumming from the rope in his hands stops. His heart pounds in his ears, but gives way for wailing, loud and piercing. It devolves into sobbing and apologizing that wakes Tyler from his terror.

“ **I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry.** ” The voice isn’t his own. Tyler doesn’t feel, he’s disconnected.  _ Blurry _ . “ **Tyler, Tyler, Tyler, Tyler, Tyler-** ”

Blurry cries for a while, doing physically what Tyler is doing figuratively, but he manages to (mostly) compose himself before Tyler does. Once Blurry’s no longer crying or breathing shakily, he gets up, pads awkwardly and unbalanced over to Tyler’s bag, grabs the 16oz container of black paint he’d badgered Tyler about until he bought it back in Denver. The only consolation to Tyler about being forced to buy it was that it was on sale for less than five dollars. He’d never seen tempera paint on sale for that cheap before.

Blurry pours some paint into his left hand, and using the window as a mirror, spreads it across his throat with the finesse of a toddler. It’s splotchy, uneven, barely covering some areas while completely staining others. Blurry coaxes the paint under Tyler’s chin and ears, all the way down to his collar, before moving to spread the remainder across his hands and wrists. It hides the marks that Tyler and Blurry both know are there, taking Tyler’s mind off of them while allowing Blurry to push the thoughts away.

For the whole day, it’s just Tyler and Blurry in Tyler’s room, for the most part quiet, but sometimes talking. It’s odd for Tyler, not being in control, but he lets Blurry keep the reigns as long as he doesn’t do anything he shouldn’t. If what Tyler is experiencing is how Blurry usually exists while Tyler is in control, he definitely doesn’t envy him. Besides, Tyler doesn’t feel emotionally prepared to take over control again yet.

Tyler can feel that Blurry is antsy, wants to leave the room, wants to explore, wants to talk to someone who isn’t Tyler, but he stays put. It’s a combination of Blurry’s not trusting anyone at DCD2 and of listening to Tyler’s request that they not leave the room. Tyler is thankful that Blurry listens to him, even when they both internally argue after hearing a shy knock at the door.

By the time Tyler is able to take over his own body again, it’s nighttime, and quite late at night too. It gives him the opportunity to sneak out, take care of his business and get a bite to eat before going back up to bed. Thankfully, he sleeps soundly throughout the night, and wakes to the sun where he’d forgotten to close the blackout curtains on his window. Tyler is thankful when no one questions his disappearing act from the previous day.

Three weeks later, Tyler has another nightmare. This time, he still has control, and despite Blurry’s protests, he goes to Josh. The yellow-haired man’s presence is comforting and his warmth soothing as he tells Tyler story after story throughout the early morning hours. Try as Blurry might, he just isn’t as comforting, so Tyler makes it a habit to go to Josh after that.

Tyler takes to wondering what he did to deserve as amazing a friend as Josh Dun.

* * *

 

If there’s one thing Blurryface can be compared to, it’s a child.

Blurry is nothing if not curious, and this extends to being curious about Josh the more time Tyler spends with him. It’s like a barrage of questions sent Tyler’s way, and he has to ignore them to keep Josh from getting suspicious.

Blurry is also annoyingly stubborn, almost as much as Tyler, which means he tries his hardest to gain control and get to Josh. It’s taxing on Tyler to try to hold Blurry back, but Tyler has more experience, Tyler is wiser than Blurry. Until he isn’t.

The headache is how Blurry takes his advantage. He doesn’t cause it, obviously, but he knows that headaches and migraines wear Tyler down, wear down Tyler’s defenses, make it easier for Blurry to take over. So, when Tyler is curled up at the foot of Josh’s bed, trying to sleep off a headache is when Blurry puts his plan into action.

Blurry tells Josh that Tyler is asleep, and while it’s true at first, Tyler wakes up pretty quickly after Blurry takes control. For now, though, it seems Blurry’s built up his strength, because Tyler can’t shake him.

Unlike a child, Blurry has a more advanced vocabulary, partially due to access to Tyler’s mind. Any word Tyler knows, Blurry probably knows, too. He’s also more profane, mostly due to virtue of being constantly exposed to vulgar language while Tyler was on the run. Tyler himself doesn’t like cursing in nine situations out of ten, so he’s sure to reprimand Blurry from inside his mind whenever a less than favourable word slips out. It doesn’t stop Blurry from telling Tyler to shut up, though.

Tyler feels kind of bad when Blurry tells Josh how Tyler is afraid of him, because for all he could deny it, he is. It’s rooted deep in Tyler, from the first incident, from Blurry’s ability to take control, from the nightmares Tyler has been suffering since Blurry first manifested. The fear is more underlying, in a way he wouldn’t want to be face-to-face with Blurry if he were a physical entity, but the fear isn’t strong enough that Tyler lets it consume him. Josh, Tyler notices, seems scared of Blurry, though it’s different than how Tyler is scared of Blurry. He doesn’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing.  _ Probably bad. _

Blurry catches the thought in the middle of asking Josh a stupid questions, interrupts himself with another round of, “ **shut up, Tyler,** ” before resuming his interrogation of Tyler’s newest friend.

It’s bad. It’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad. Blurry doesn’t know any better, Tyler is aware of this, but there are some things that step over boundaries that Tyler feels Blurry should already know to look out for. It’s one thing asking a mutant if they’re going to report another mutant to a government agency known for discriminating against and hurting mutants. It’s another to straight up ask if you’re planning on using someone for whatever purpose. Tyler intervenes, but Blurry silences him, and continues with grilling Josh. It eases up when he allows Josh to ask questions of his own, for Blurry at least. The prospect of any question Josh could come out with scares Tyler.

Tyler doesn’t miss the hurt that flashes across Josh’s face when he hears from Blurry that he’s dangerous. He doesn’t have all the details, but he knows Josh isn’t here of his own choice. No one has told Tyler what happened, but he hasn’t asked. He’s not sure he wants to know.

When it’s finally over, Blurry doesn’t give over control. He drops away, and for a moment it’s so quiet Tyler is scared he’s  _ gone _ . But then he feels Blurry, drained and exhausted from the effort of holding Tyler back for so long, and he almost doesn’t register that he’s now the one locking eyes with Josh instead of Blurry.

Tyler doesn’t think. Instead, he hops off of Josh’s bed, rushing back into his own room across the hall like he’d been burned.

That wasn’t meant to be a joke.

* * *

 

Josh leaves for two days. Tyler doesn’t let it get to him. He doesn’t. He does.

The first day, he’s rational about it. Josh doesn’t want to see him. Josh doesn’t want to be friends. Josh doesn’t want any of this.

Tyler puts on the paint as if he were Blurry, and while he does keep a bit more to his room, he doesn’t stay cooped up there the entire time. Sure, he misses dinner on the first night after Josh finds out, and sure, he sleeps through breakfast the next morning, but he does come out for food at lunch. Josh isn’t there.

Mikey says that Josh asked him to go home, said he missed it. Tyler isn’t the one who asks, that’s Andy. Apparently he’d found Josh asleep at his drum kit earlier in the morning. Tyler hopes Josh is okay.

The next day, Josh doesn’t come back. Mikey goes looking but Josh isn’t with him when he arrives. Tyler sits at his desk and writes in his notebook for most of the afternoon. Heavydirtysoul is starting to look like a real word with how many times he’s written it. Tyler would probably have written it even more if Brendon hadn’t dragged him downstairs for a movie marathon. Either way, Tyler is too lost in thought to actually pay the movies any mind.

The third day, Tyler stumbles into Josh in the hallway, and wastes no time apologizing. Tyler is crying, he knows it, and so is Josh. He clutches the sleeves of Tyler’s floral kimono and Tyler’s hands bunch into the back of Josh’s t-shirt.

They stand there for a long time, crying and apologizing and explaining. Tyler had been afraid of what Josh would say about Blurry. Josh tells him about going home and the basement and the ice cream and apologizes for worrying Tyler.

After a while, Josh mumbles something against Tyler’s shoulders, but as Tyler tries to ask what it was, Josh bursts out into sobs again. Tyler frets and shushes and comforts as best he can, wiping tears away from Josh’s eyes with his thumbs. (They’re little more tears than they are near-boiling salty water, but Tyler still wipes them away.)

He coaxes Josh gently into his room, convinces him to change into more comfortable clothes. Tyler changes, too, wiping off as much of the paint as he can, and he puts the kimono back on because it’s cozy. 

They lay together in Tyler’s bed, hugging. The black paint is mostly gone, just a few smudges left under Tyler’s nails and on his right wrist. His left hand cards gently through Josh’s faded yellow hair. Josh is tired, Tyler can tell, and he mumbles out what seems like an apology with his eyes closed, head resting on Tyler’s shoulder.

“Don’t apologize,” Tyler says gently, and soon falls asleep himself.

His last thought before falling away from consciousness is  _ we’ll be okay. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try to post the next chapter in two weeks, on May 27th. Patience is appreciated if I can't make the date.
> 
> Please feel free to leave kudos or comments if you've made it this far. Every single one is loved and appreciated.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and thank you for your patience.


	7. Don't Threaten Me With A Good Time

Birthdays at DCD2 are a mediocre occasion.

Well, that’s not quite true.

A birthday at DCD2 is as big or small of a deal as the person wants it to be. If a resident is celebrating a birthday, they can do more or less whatever they want for the day, as long as it’s within reason. Part of the reason for this is to prevent unnecessary conflicts or misunderstandings that can arise when trying to plan a surprise party for someone. Another reason is just that trying to make sure you pick an activity that eleven people can all agree with is a pain in the ass even during “family” game night, so it’s just easier for everyone if they get to choose what they wanna do.

The first birthday that comes up after Josh and Tyler arrive at DCD2 is Gerard’s, which is pretty tame. In the morning, he goes to New Jersey with Mikey and Frank in tow to celebrate for a bit there with friends and family, and the trio comes back in the late afternoon to share cake with the DCD2 residents.

(Gerard bursts out laughing when he sees his birthday cake, with a few of his drawings from the past year printed onto the frosting and the words “ _ happy 30th Gerald  _ ” written in frosting between a group of paper-white vampires and a doodle of a cube magnet reaching out to the number 30 with blocky hands. Frank apologizes, claiming he’d even  _ spelled out _ Gerard’s name to the guy who wrote the birthday message onto the cake, apparently with no luck. From what Josh understands, this isn’t the first time someone had misspelt Gerard’s name as Gerald.)

Gerard’s birthday is on April 9th. Brendon’s, three days later, is on April 12th. His idea of a celebration isn’t as tame as Gee’s.

To be fair, Brendon does wait until the evening to put his birthday plans into action, or else it would have been vetoed before he could finish explaining. It’s still a stupid idea, but a stupid idea that the majority agree to, so they end up going along with it.

“Super Smashed Brothers,” as Brendon deems the event, involves playing matches of Super Smash Bros. on the Wii U. Four players per round, and the players are switched out every round, no matter what. Names are drawn out of a hat to chose the players. Two players can’t choose the same fighter, and the arena is randomized each time. The twist, though, is the vodka.

Well, it’s not all vodka. There’s also wine and plain old beer to choose from, if you choose to go the alcoholic route. You can also choose to remain sober, taking shots of non-alcoholic beverages instead. A shot, of whatever drink you choose, is to be taken whenever you lose. Not when you’re in second or third place, but when you’re the dead last, absolutely-got-your-ass-handed-to-you loser.

Andy, Patrick, Gerard, and Tyler choose to play sober. They’re set up to take shots of water or juice, though Tyler insists that if he downs a shot of anything, it will be Red Bull. Frank shrugs and tosses him a can from the fridge. Josh does agree to ingest some alcohol, but his shots will be of white wine, and he’ll alternate with water to keep from getting too drunk. Fire powers and alcohol don’t go well together, and that’s before you factor in the fact that intoxication messes with his control of his powers. Patrick also promises that if Josh does too badly, he’ll take the wine out of the equation completely.

This leaves Pete, Brendon, Joe, Frank, Dallon, and Mikey free to get drunk according to their loses. Pete is already grumbling about how hungover he’ll be in the morning, but he was one of the most eager to play, so he’s mostly ignored.

It started out pretty okay. The first round found Patrick, Dallon, Frank, and Pete. Dallon comes in first place, with Patrick and Frank tying for second, and Pete losing. He downs a shot of vodka. The next round is Tyler, Josh, Mikey, and Gerard. Josh loses, while Tyler goes into sudden death against Mikey. Tyler wins, and laughs when Josh makes a face at the taste of the wine. Andy, Joe, Brendon, and Frank are next. Frank loses, takes the shot, but so does Brendon.

“Bren, you won. You don’t need to take a shot.” Mikey points out.

“I do what I want,” replies Brendon. He’s manifested a glass of beer at some point while the players switched between rounds.

Tyler is supposed to play the third round against Patrick, Pete, and Gerard, but refuses to get up from his seat next to Josh, so Mikey is chosen to replace him. Pete loses again.  _ Shot! _

Frank, Joe, Brendon, and Josh. Joe loses.  _ Shot!  _  Pete, Gerard, Dallon, and Andy. Pete loses again, but since it’s his third consecutive loss, it’s decided that Dallon, as runner up, will take Pete’s penalty.  _ Shot!   _ Tyler, Josh, Patrick, Brendon. Brendon loses. He’s been taking shots after every round no matter who was playing and who lost. Dallon has since confiscated his beer. He decides that since he’s lost himself now, it’s double or nothing for him.  _ Shots! _

They keep going. Pete is switched from beer to apple juice by a very clever Patrick, and he never even realizes. At one point, Pete, faced with the challengers of Tyler, Josh, and Patrick, even preemptively downed a shot.

After his third round, it becomes increasingly clear that Tyler is unfairly good at Smash, so he’s made to sit out some rounds when his name is picked.

(“That’s not fair guys, just because I’m really good-”

“Shut up, Tyler.”)

Josh is made to sit out some rounds too, since Tyler refuses to play without Josh. When his name is called for a round, a Tyler-shaped shadow tries to follow him to the controllers. Josh ends the night with seven losses- he takes three wine shots and four water shots, but he’s buzzed enough to be more giggly and unrestrained, leaning heavily against Tyler’s shoulder and agreeing with the insistence that they’re double or nothing when it comes to Smash.

Aside from Tyler, everyone has come in last place and taken their shot(s). Tyler has also taken a shot of Red Bull, as promised, after failing to convince Brendon to stop drinking.

Dallon is still fighting that battle, the longest of the night. Brendon won’t be doing too much tomorrow, given just how much of the vodka he’s consumed, along with half his confiscated glass of beer and two glasses of wine snuck past Patrick and Dallon when Josh gave up the bottle.

“Brendon, you need to stop,” Dallon declares, having triumphantly reclaimed the half-empty wine bottle from a stumbling Brendon.

“Why should I?” Brendon fires back. He’s slurring, of course, but he still knows a fairly decent collection of words from his vocabulary. Earlier, he’d told Andy he wasn’t “ _ as think as you drunk I am. _ ”

“Because, if you go on like this we’ll be finding you passed out in a drain pipe in Toronto in the morning.” From the specifics, Tyler wonders if that exact situation had happened before.

“Hey,” hiccups Brendon, “don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Brendon passes out shortly after that. It takes Dallon, Gerard, and Andy to take him up to his room. In the morning, he wakes everyone up when his powers slip and cause the fire alarm to go off. Pete punches him when he finally emerges late in the afternoon.

* * *

Andy has certain rules when it comes to the others asking him to heal them.

If it’s something minor, like a papercut or a sunburn, he won’t heal them. If it’s a bigger thing, like a large or deep cut or a sprain, he’s more likely to agree, but not always. Really big stuff, like life-threatening wounds or broken bones, he will be quick to heal without needing to be asked.

For Andy, certain illnesses fall under the “minor” label, and he won’t heal them. These include things like the common cold or the flu, although these sometimes have exceptions. If they get too bad or develop into something worse, he’ll help. If Frank is the one suffering from some form of illness, Andy will agree as soon as he asks.

Part of the reason Frank is an exception to Andy’s minor illness rule is because he only asks once in a blue moon. The guy’s immune system was seemingly out to get him, resulting in nearly chronic illness and infections throughout the years, and through it all, he’d remained a stubborn, independent bastard. If Frank did ask Andy to heal him of these minor bugs, it was because he was finally getting his head out of his ass, or it was really bad.

When he’d gone to New Jersey to celebrate Gerard’s birthday, he’d spent time with their friends and family, including the kid of one of their old friends, who’d just gotten over a stomach bug. Frank’s immune system worked in the way that he didn’t even need to be exposed to someone contagious to get sick; he could be in the same room as someone exposed to someone exposed to a semi-contagious person and still get sick. Being near his friend’s kid was more than enough to take him down.

At first, he thought he’d miraculously avoid getting sick for once in his life, but the day after Gerard’s birthday, Frank began to feel ill. Before the end of the day he’d gone to Andy, slightly nauseous and with a stomachache. Andy got rid of the bug for him, and that was the end of that.

Or, it was, until Tyler found Josh collapsed in the hallway between their rooms two days after Brendon’s party.

The day after Brendon’s birthday, Josh had had some stomach pain, but brushed it off as a result of the alcohol from the night before. It got worse later in the day, but he felt fine otherwise, so he didn’t let it bother him. It would go away soon.

By the time he went to bed, his stomach was still bothering him, and he’d gotten a headache somewhere between dinner and playing video games with Tyler. Josh was also exhausted, and practically sunk into his mattress when he laid down. In the morning, though, Josh felt  _ capitol-T Terrible _ .

It felt like even breathing sent a wave of nausea through him, and he refused to move in case he threw up, or set something on fire. Or threw up and his  _ puke _ caught on fire. It had happened before. It wasn’t pretty.

Josh spent a while trying to distract himself from the rolling in his stomach, thinking of X-Files and snow and other pleasant things, because he’d read somewhere that your brain controlled whatever part of your stomach made you puke, and because when he got sick like this, he sometimes lost control over his powers. If it were a cold, or just a regular flu? Josh would be fine. Some kind of food poisoning or other sickness that made you physically sick? Josh was a goner.

It could have been hours or it could have been minutes between Josh waking up feeling queasy and actually bolting out of bed to run for the bathroom, but it did eventually happen, and he was no further than three feet from his door before hot bile was burning it’s way up his throat. Onto the floor went some of his stomach contents, and Josh landed in a heap not too far away, shivering from the sensation. The taste in his mouth was anything but pleasant.

Tyler was also awake at that time, scribbling down a chord progression for the ukulele onto a spare piece of paper. He’d gotten back into writing songs since he’d gotten settled into life at DCD2, bit by bit. It gave him something to do when nothing else seemed worth it, and a way to let out everything in a safe and concentrated way. Between rubbing away the marks on his fingers from the ukulele strings and grabbing his pen to note down the next progression of the song, though, Tyler heard a painful, guttural noise, followed closely by a heavy  **_thump!_ **  just outside his door. Looking for the source of the noise led him to find Josh’s curled up form.

It takes ten minutes and the combined effort of Patrick, Dallon, and Tyler to convince Josh to roll over onto a blanket so he can be put back into his bed, and then Andy has to help the three of them to actually lift Josh. He whines and whimpers at the feeling of being lifted, and pukes again once he’s set down, this time into a basin that Andy had been wise enough to bring.

Tyler offers to stay with Josh, since he’s really in no shape to be alone. It sucks, though, seeing his friend like this. Josh is usually bright, and colourful, and warm in the best way. Right now, though, sick to his stomach and trying to tell Tyler he’ll be fine on his own, he’s almost pitiful. He’s pale from sickness, and if he so much as breathes the wrong way, his face gets a tinge of nauseous green. Josh is also stupidly warm, since the nausea and sickness take away his ability to control his powers. Tyler feels like he’s standing too close to a fire, and he’s sitting about ten feet away at Josh’s desk, bouncing his knee up and down as he waits for Andy to come back.

When Andy does come back, he’s got some lukewarm water and saltine crackers for Josh. The yellow haired man blinks up blearily at the proffered bottle, but manages to will himself to grab it. He only manages a few small sips before he feels too nauseous to continue, and he won’t even try the crackers, so Andy leaves them on his bedside table.

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess this is something that’s on your minorities list,” Tyler asks, and Andy nods. He knows the drill from the time Pete tried to get Andy to heal a hangover, not related to Brendon’s recent birthday celebration.

“Yeah, sorry, Josh,” Andy says.

“It’s fine, I get it.” Josh assures. “I feel like crap, but I get it.”

“For what it’s worth, it’ll go away quickly. The kid Frank got it from was better after two days,” Andy reports. Josh nods, small, but there. “Need anything else?”

“Something cold, ice cubes maybe? I’m too damn hot.” Andy nods and heads out.

About twenty minutes later, Gerard and Mikey arrive with a mini fridge and a glass with some ice cubes in it. Josh grabs one from the top and begins to suck on it as it melts, and Tyler helps the Ways set up the mini fridge to be able to freeze stuff. Josh continues his slow progress on the ice cubes in his glass as Tyler rushes down the hall to fill some trays, and when he gets back, he manages to convince Josh to try one of the saltines. He manages to eat one, but it comes back up with about half of the second cracker a few minutes later. Tyler simply cleans Josh’s face off with a cold facecloth and asks if he’s okay with a movie. Josh naps instead.

Eventually, Josh feels slightly better, managing to eat some soup Tyler brings him up and keeping it down. He naps a bit more too, dozing for nearly three hours while Tyler’s across the hall with the ukulele again, keeping an eye on him from both their open doorways.

When Josh wakes up, he’s hungry again, and eats some more crackers and some applesauce. After that, he and Tyler watch cartoons on YouTube, which turns into Tyler grabbing Josh’s  _ Who Framed Roger Rabbit   _ DVD from his shelf and popping it into the computer.

It’s almost 11PM when the movie ends, and while Tyler can tell that Josh is tired, he refuses to admit it, and seemingly doesn’t want to go to sleep quite yet either.

“Sing me to sleep,” says Josh, fully expecting Tyler to say no.

Tyler says, “okay,” and pads out the door and across the hall. Josh rolls over, expects him not to come back, but ukulele in hand, Tyler returns. “Hey,” he pokes at Josh’s back with his nails, “turn over, you big baby.”

Josh is not a big baby, and he tells Tyler just as much. Tyler laughs as he double checks the instrument in his hands, makes sure it’s in tune. “Okay,” he says, and starts to strum.

The first song he plays for Josh is one of his own, one of his oldest. Trees sounds so much better on the piano, and he tells Josh as much, but it’s not bad on the ukulele either.

After Trees comes Hey Soul Sister, and then House of the Rising Sun, and Josh asks Tyler to sing another of his own songs. This time he plays House of Gold, soft and crooning, and quietly, secretly, misses his mother. Ruby is next, and by the time Tyler finishes that one, Josh is practically asleep, forcing his eyes to remain open and fixated on Tyler.

“One more,” ask Josh. Tyler nods.

“One more,” he agrees. “I can’t think of any, though. What do you wanna hear?”

“I don’t care, you’re the singer here, Joseph,” says Josh, and just like that, Tyler decides.

“ _ I closed my eyes, _ ” Tyler hums, “ _ drew back the curtain. To see for certain, what I thought I knew...  _ ”

Josh is fast asleep before Tyler even finishes the next verse.

In the morning, Josh feels better, but he and Tyler decide to hang out and have a lazy day of their own again, anyway. Josh’s laughter is bright as he messes up again on a chord Tyler’s been trying to teach him on the ukulele for almost half an hour.

No one else gets sick after Josh, thankfully.

* * *

Gerard, unlike most of the residents of DCD2, actually has a job.

It isn’t a slight against them to say that the majority of DCD2 is unemployed, it’s just a fact. Some, like Josh, can’t have jobs due to the circumstances that brought them there. Others, like Brendon, are too much of a liability to be among the general public for large stretches of time.

Regardless of the circumstances, it’s luckily not a requirement at DCD2 for the residents to be employed. A few of the residents do choose to work, though.

Patrick is an incredibly talented musician, and knows how to make songs sound amazing. Sometimes he’ll write songs, and sometimes he’ll edit or mix them; this is done in collaboration with a record label Pete used to work for, which is how Patrick got the connection. Unofficially, Patrick is also a type of director at DCD2, keeping the place running and making sure everyone doesn’t fail at life along the way.

Pete himself, though he used to work in music as well, owns a clothing brand called Clandestine, which is apparently quite popular. The brand sells a variety of different clothes, but the most popular picks are always the hoodies with the brand’s bat heart logo.

Gerard, evidently, also has a job. He writes comics.

He has an office set up on the second floor of DCD2, one of the empty rooms which has since had most of the furniture removed in favour of a better desk and a boatload of art supplies.

Gerard has one comic series he’s already published, and another currently being written. The first series was published through Dark Horse Comics, which then allowed Gerard the creative freedom to pitch them another series, and they’d liked what he’d cooked up for them.

Although with only one published issue, Gerard’s second series,  _ Danger Days  _ proved to be much more popular than his first,  _ The Umbrella Academy _ . Whereas  _ Umbrella Academy _ followed a group of children born with superpowers,  _ Danger Days _ follows four young men of indeterminate age, fighting against an evil corporation vying for control of one of humanity’s last safe havens, the Battery City. The post-apocalyptic setting and freedom-fighter nature of the main characters led to a lot of interest, and while that’s an amazing thought, it also makes Gerard a bit worried.

The mini fridge lent to Josh was from Gerard’s office, and he gets it back two days after Josh gets better, reigniting Gerard’s tendency to forget to leave the room. With the sudden influx of readers, he’s beginning to stress more about the story and the art and just  _ everything _ , and between making sure all the lineart is good and the colours are the way he wants them, between rewriting dialogue and making changes to his overall story outline, Gerard tends to forget how to be a functioning human being.

The mini fridge helps. It gives him a place to store food and water, which in turns keeps him fed and hydrated until he runs out of sustenance or until Frank and/or Mikey drag him out of his office every few days. He doesn’t need too much, so the mini fridge is perfect for holding pudding cups and Coca-Cola for when he wants them. Aside from the mini fridge, Gerard’s office also has a coffee maker and a cabinet full of chips and instant coffee. Basically, Gerard lives like a broke college student while he’s writing.

Most of the time, Mikey and Frank will drag Gerard out of his office for a nice, homemade meal, and will force him to stay out overnight for a movie or “family” game night, and come morning, Gerard will lock himself away again. This process has been going back and forth since late March, with a small gap for Gerard’s own birthday celebration, and then Brendon’s.

Frank, though, has had enough of Gerard pulling a disappearing act all day, every day, and makes it his mission to get him to stop.

It’s not that it’s unlike Gerard to get this into writing; during the process for  _ Umbrella Academy _ , he did this shit too. But it’s so much worse this time around, because during  _ Umbrella Academy,  _ it happened maybe twice a week at most, and once every ten days at least. With  _ Danger Days _ , it’s so much worse.

Frank doesn’t need to be told what the difference is. With  _ Umbrella Academy _ , Gerard still wasn’t overly well known. The subject matter was also entirely too similar to the real life mutant situation, what with the kids being  _ born _ with their powers, which turned some potential readers off right away. But dystopia is in, and  _ Danger Days _ falls into that genre, so both returning readers from  _ Umbrella Academy _ and new readers seeing Gerard’s work for the first time are being drawn in. Frank has seen a lot of the drafts and concepts of  _ Danger Days _ . It’s not hard to get pulled in.

The almost absurd amount of new readers is causing Gerard to worry though, stressing over details he was so stubbornly sure about before. He’s entirely scrapped characters he’d been so excited about, changed almost the entire second issue outright in the past week, and has pushed aside concrete plot points in favour of trying to replace them with flimsier, more “popular” tropes.

Convincing Gerard to leave his office and come outside with Frank is like trying to move Mount Everest. He keeps telling Frank that he has all this shit to get done, but Frank is more stubborn this time around. Before an hour has passed he’s got Gerard outside by the blossoming orange trees, distracted and evidently not entirely present where he stand beside Frank, but outside with him all the same.

It’s almost too tempting to slip a blossom into Gerard’s hair, but Frank manages to shove the urge down. Gerard’s already playing with the white heather Frank had dropped into his hand a few minutes ago, although he doesn’t seemed to have registered that he’s even holding it yet.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Aks Frank, and Gerard whips around to look at him.

“I feel like I’m going to disappoint them, Frankie. It’s too much all at once and I’m going to fuck it up,” Gerard says. Frank shakes his head.

“You’re not gonna fuck it up, Gee.”

“Yes, I am.  _ Danger Days  _ isn’t anywhere near what it could be, I know it. And everyone’s reading it and I’m getting all these comments and messages and they expect so much but I can’t give it to them.” Gerard takes a deep breath. “I’m changing every single detail I told myself I wouldn’t because I know if I don’t, they’ll all hate it.”

“So what?” Asks Frank, and Gerard looks taken aback, if not a bit afraid.

“Frank-”

“No, seriously, Gerard. Who gives a shit if they hate it? It’s your fucking story, if it isn’t going your way than what’s the point? Besides, you’re statistically more likely to be unsure of or hate something you yourself created, even if it’s good. Just because you think they won’t like it doesn’t mean they won’t. They probably will, Gee. The  _ Danger Days  _ concept you showed me and Mikey is amazing, you shouldn’t be changing it this much.

“Don’t change every little detail because you feel you have to. If it changes in a natural way as you’re telling the story, fine, but don’t force it. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken.”

Gerard is studying Frank intently when he finishes, a look somewhere between surprise, awe, and confusion on his face, as if none of this had ever occurred to him before. Frank wonders if maybe it actually hasn’t.

“Do you- do you really mean that, Frank?” Gerard asks, and Frank nods, steadfast and determined.

“I really do mean that, Gerard.”

The two of them stand in silence for a few moments, side by side, just existing. Gerard studies Frank, who steps forward to tend to a flower that isn’t budding as well as the others near it.

When Frank steps away from the flowers, Gerard reaches forward to grab ahold of his wrist. Frank turns to look at Gerard, something glinting in his eyes.

“Gee?”

“Fuck, Frank. You- Can I- fuck!” Gerard takes a step forward, cups Frank’s face in his hands. Frank leans into the touch, doesn’t pull away. Gerard takes another step forward, and another, until he’s practically flush against Frank.

He leans forward.

The kiss is short, sweet, chaste. It lasts all of three seconds before Gerard pulls away. Frank is looking at Gerard, awed and dazed, bringing a hand up to his lips once Gerard’s have let go of him.

“Gee?” Frank asks again.

“I really like you, Frankie,” blurts Gerard, already beginning to babble. “Like, a lot. A stupid amount, it might even be love at this point. I just, never said it, and Mikey says I'm stupid, and-”

Frank pulls Gerard forward, into a hug that would be surprisingly strong if Gerard didn't already  _ know _ , because he's  _ Frank _ and Gerard's stupidly fond of his bone-crushing hugs.

“I really like you, too, Gee. Also a lot. Also probably love.”

Gerard squeezes Frank back almost as tightly.

When they come back inside, Gerard’s got a red rose in one hand, and is clutching tightly to Frank’s with his other. Mikey gives them both a once-over, rolls his eyes, and calls out to them as they walk away,

“Fucking finally, you lovesick idiots!”

* * *

Probably the most nerve-wracking day of Pete Wentz’s life is April 27th, 2017.

It’s Patrick’s birthday, and he’s turning 33. Pete has been planning this day for months. Nervous doesn’t even begin to describe what Pete’s feeling. He’s freaking out.

Pete wakes up long before Patrick does- nothing new, with Pete’s struggles in the past with insomnia, as well as Patrick’s persistent habit of sleeping in. It’s too early for anyone to consider getting up, so Pete stays in bed, laying awake and sneaking the occasional glance at Patrick. He’s splayed out in that awkward way people seem to do when they’re fast asleep and completely disconnected from their conscious thoughts and worries. It’s not attractive in any way, but a small part of Pete still finds it endearing.

Bronx wanders into Pete and Patrick’s room sometime after eight, and Pete swiftly leads him into the kitchen for some breakfast. Bronx normally visits around the middle of the month, but he was with Ashlee this year for Easter, and Pete had really wanted Bronx here for Patrick’s birthday.

Because of Patrick’s habit of sleeping in, the past three mornings since Bronx had arrived had been he and Pete eating their breakfast together and enjoying some light conversation, eventually being interrupted by other DCD2 residents wandering down for food, or coffee, or both.

Today, though, Pete doesn’t want to be interrupted. If he is, he’ll never get the words out of his mouth.

“Bronx,” Pete says, “can I trust you to keep a secret from Patrick for me? Just for today?”

Bronx frowns at Pete over his bowl of cereal. “I thought you weren’t supposed to keep secrets from Patrick anymore, though,” he says.

“This is a different kind of secret. Not like before, this is a good one. It’s a surprise for Patrick.” Pete amends. Bronx nods this time.

“What’s the surprise, then?”

Pete takes a deep breath, takes a look around, takes a step forward. He leans in next to Bronx’s ear, hoping no one walks in to see him right now and ask what he’s doing.

“I’m going to ask Patrick to marry me,” he whispers, and as he pulls away, it feels like his breath has been taken away. If he can’t even tell his own son, how the fuck is Pete supposed to ask Patrick?

Pete can almost see the moment Bronx’s face begins to light up, brighter than a Christmas tree and eyes wider than full moons.

“You and Patrick are gonna get married?” Bronx exclaims, and Pete is thankful no one has yet wandered by. Gossip at DCD2 was ridiculous for a group of grown men, though to be fair, this group of men included Brendon Urie, with a mouth bigger than his forehead- literally and figuratively.

“Maybe, bud,” says Pete, “if ‘Trick says yes.”

The idea of Pete and Patrick getting married is apparently the best anyone’s given Bronx in a long time, because he can’t seem to let Pete change the subject. Even while Bronx is doing one of his homework packets for the week, he’s asking Pete for details, though he’s kept them limited. All Bronx has to know is that Pete will be asking tonight, when he takes Patrick out to dinner.

Pete himself knows everything and nothing about the plan. Every time he’d tried to prepare what to say before asking, he’d overthought too much and ended up scrapping the idea of a prepared speech altogether. He had made reservations for tonight, but the restaurant isn’t fancy; it’s a place he and Patrick always visit on date night and he knows that’s all Patrick would need. He also told the restaurant’s manager about his plan, but he’s not sure when during the date he’s going to ask. Pete knows himself though, and will likely ask after they’ve eaten and while waiting for the bill, assuming he gets the courage up to force the words from his mouth.

If Patrick says yes, Pete doesn’t know what he’ll do. If Patrick says  _ no _ , Pete doesn’t know what he’ll do. Probably cry, for either answer.

Patrick stumbles out of bed at 10:30, with a hat planted firmly atop his bedhead, and it reminds Pete of when Bronx first started visiting DCD2. He’d been younger then, and more gullible. He’d been of the impression that Patrick could never ever take off his hat ever, which Pete supposes isn’t too far from the truth.

Patrick smiles into it when Pete kisses him good morning, and as he waits for his coffee to brew, he settles next to Bronx at the table, double-checking his spelling work, and gently helping Bronx when he asks for help with a word. Patrick’s always been good with Bronx, and it eases Pete’s nerves a bit to see the two working together.

For the better part of the day, Patrick takes it easy with Pete and Bronx, and before they know it, it’s time for them to leave. Pete checks no less than five times to be sure he has the ring box in his jacket pocket and that it’s not noticeable, until Brendon is ushering him out the door alongside Patrick, a bemused Bronx watching. Brendon is babysitting Bronx for Pete tonight, which means that Dallon will be watching them both to make sure everything is fine. If Dallon could make everything fine on Pete’s end, too, that would be great.

Dinner is great, which is good, though Pete wasn’t worried about that. He keeps thinking about whether it’s a good time to ask, and before he knows it, they’ve finished their meals and he’s shared desert with Patrick in that stupid way that couples usually do when they haven’t been dating long but Pete’s never grown out of and Patrick continues to indulge him in, and he’s paid the bill, and they’re back at DCD2. The big question has not been asked, and Pete kind of wants to run away and hide, but it’s Patrick’s birthday and he doesn’t want to worry him so he stays put instead.

Bronx, it seems, has a homing beacon on Pete, because almost as soon as they’re in their room, he comes rushing over to Pete and Patrick.

“Dad!” Bronx shouts, excited, as he dodges Brendon’s attempts to slow him down. Pete feels his knees go a bit weak, but he can excuse falling down for kneeling to hug his son.

“How did it go?” Asks Brendon, now in the doorway, and he’s got a knowing look in his eyes. Bronx continues on the route of questions before anyone can answer Brendon’s.

“Did you say yes?” This one is directed at a confused Patrick, before Bronx turns back to Pete, “did he say yes? Are you gonna-”

Pete hates to cut him off, hates to disappoint him, but he doesn’t really have a choice. “I didn’t ask him, bud,” he says sadly.

“Didn’t ask me what? Pete, what’s going on?” Patrick asks. There’s an edge in his voice, sad and confused, that makes Pete’s heart ache in his chest.

“Dad was going to ask you to marry him,” Bronx says.

Someone pulls a sharp intake of breath. Pete isn’t sure who, because as soon as the words had left Bronx’s mouth, he’d hidden his face in his hands. Pete’s own breathing is pretty shaky right now.

“Pete,” says Patrick, but he doesn’t think he can stand the words that will surely follow, so Pete forces words of his own out from behind his hands.

“I’ve been meaning to ask for a while,” he says, muffled, silenced, scrambled, “but I was too much of a coward, and now I’ve messed it up, and…” Pete’s sentence trails off, as he peeks through his fingers. Patrick is silent, jaw dropped, eyes wide. Pete crumbles.

“Oh, Pete, no…” He tells himself, hiding tears behind his palms. For a moment, he forgets that Bronx and Brendon are still here, witnessing the entire thing.

There are footsteps shuffling closer to Pete, and he flinches. Gentle hands rub at his shoulders, work slowly up to his wrists, lead them away to reveal his face. Patrick’s eyes meet Pete’s, almost as tearstained, but he’s smiling, pure and true and adorable.

Patrick kneels too, latching tightly onto Pete, as if he might disappear as soon as Patrick lets go.

“Pete, yes,” Patrick chokes. Pete chokes too.

“What?”

Face to face, now. “Yes, Pete. Yes!” Pete blinks.

“You mean-?”

“Yes!” Patrick cuts Pete off. He doesn’t mind, just pulls Patrick into a kiss, two kisses, three.

Brendon whoops from behind them, loud and filled with laughter. Bronx rushes forward to Pete and Patrick, just now picking themselves up off the floor.

“Are you getting married?” Asks Bronx, eyes hopeful.

“We’re getting married,” says Patrick, smile splitting his face. Bronx develops a matching grin, and throws himself at them with laughter.  



	8. 8/9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're lost, context will provide some clues.

* * *

8: Careful Follow My Instruction (And I Will Show You Self-Destruction)  


* * *

Between the night of May 15th and the morning of May 16th, Josh wakes up to an empty bed and a pounding in his head.

Well. It isn’t his head. It’s a door. Not his door, it’s too far for that. Down the hall a bit, then.

He’s bleary from sleep. Whatever woke him startled Tux from his place on the pillow he and Josh are sharing, and Bennie at the foot of the bed just hasn’t had the motivation to move yet. Josh sighs and closes his eyes.

Another sound; Mike pops in. “Grab Bennie and meet me downstairs,” he says. Tux is picked up and Mike pops back out with the cat in tow. Neither Josh nor Bennie make any moves.

Another bang startles Josh. This one is closer, and he hears a thump that follows it. It’s heavy and he swears there’s a fleshy edge to it, as if someone fell or was knocked down. He wonders who’s come back to VI0IV drunk again.

The next noise is his door opening. Bennie finally gets up, and bolts between the two worn-looking women squeezed into the frame. Josh himself shoots up as his dog rushes off.

“Grab him,” a voice instructs. The two women step forward, clutching tightly to Josh’s arms and pulling him from between the sheets. He’s in his underwear and a wife beater, smeared eyeliner doing well to distract from the messiness of his bleached hair, tangled around itself as it rests near his shoulders. A mess, he must look like. He has an excuse, he is a mess. He’s a perfect disaster.

As the women prop him on the floor, kneeling like he’s proposing again, another woman steps forward. She takes Josh’s face into her hands.

“Pity to see you turn black and blue, sweetie. If only your hair were still those colours; you’d match.” Josh looks her up and down.

A few hours ago, in black lingerie and a perfectly mussed hairstyle, everything was different. Flowing black shirt, jean shorts, black thigh highs with black garters. Dark eyes narrow. If looks could kill.

“Truth or dare,” she asks, candy-coated sickly sweet.

“Truth,” says Josh.

“There never was any,” she says. Click, click, click, she steps away. In the middle of the door frame, surrounded by a deceiving halo of light, she turns back to him.

“Make it hurt,” she commands. She doesn’t stay to make sure it does.

One of the two women holding him lets go, stands in front of him as the other holds him in position with a killer grip on both arms. The first punch cracks like lightening against his ribs.

Josh shrieks.

* * *

About halfway through the month of May, the mutants of DCD2 are ushered into a room most of them didn’t know they even had, hidden between the gym and some empty space in the basement.

It looks like a board room, with off-white walls and a row of chairs aligned along one long table. At the far end of the room is a projector screen, pulled down and starkly popping out compared to the faded colouring of the wall, though the projector isn’t on. There are a total of twelve chairs at the table, so once everyone has sat down, there’s one left over.

Patrick is the one who called everyone down here. He’s got a worried expression on his face, and he’s fidgeting with his engagement ring. Pete, next to him, is a picture of upset and anger. It sets everyone on edge.

“What’s going on?” Asks Frank, though he’s speaking for everybody.

“There was an attack, last night, on a haven. Designation VI0IV. About half of the mutants there were kidnapped.” Patrick says. A collective of jaws drop.

“What about the other mutants? Are they okay?” Asks Dallon.

“Any mutants who weren’t kidnapped escaped,” says Pete, “a few were injured but most made it out unscathed. VI0IV was completely destroyed, though.”

“What’s going to happen to the mutants who escaped?” This is Andy, “did the attackers get any information?”

“As far as I was told, only mutants got taken. The information was well guarded and then deleted when the attackers got too close. As for the escaped residents, they’ll be sent to different havens. Four of them will be sent here, in about a month.”

More questions are asked, and Pete and Patrick work together to answer them to the best of their abilities. Little information is known about the actual attack on VI0IV, although it’s believed that someone inside was connected to the attack, and the actual attackers apparently fought like soldiers.

The four mutants who will arrive at DCD2 will be arriving in mid-June, and will stay at DCD2 indefinitely. The reason they won’t be arriving for so long is due to the fact that one of them was hurt badly in the attack, and needs to spend time recovering. For the time being, the four are staying with family in Vancouver, not too far from VI0IV. Everyone also finds out the names of the new mutants they’ll be welcoming; Josh Ramsay, Matt Webb, Mike Ayley, and Ian Casselman.

Because of the attack on VI0IV, a lot of safe havens are cracking down on safety rules. DCD2 isn’t going as crazy with new rules as most places, but no one will be able to go out alone anymore, and someone needs to be notified for every mutant who leaves, even if they’re only going outside. This is understandable, given the circumstances, but it doesn’t stop Frank, who spends most of his time outside in the garden, from grumbling about it.

For the next week or so, everyone goes about their lives about as normal as a group of mutants can. They get used to the new buddy system, and Frank stops grumbling about having to find someone other than Gerard whenever he needs to go outside. They prepare for the new arrivals and try to convince themselves that things will work out. The missing VI0IV mutants will be found, alive and well, and everything will go back to how it was. Until the penultimate day of May, when a new face arrives with more news.

Spencer Smith arrives at DCD2 with hopeful gratitude in his eyes, and a stack of photos in his hands, which he hands out to everyone when they get settled into the basement board room again.

Everyone’s copy is of the same photo. It displays an effeminate face, short brown hair and brown eyes, with a shy and guarded expression. The photo is chest up, and the person is wearing what appears to be a floral-print dress shirt with a maroon waistcoat and similarly coloured scarf. Written slightly askew on the back is information; Ryan Ross; male; August 30, 1986; 30 years old; brown hair; brown eyes; 5’11”; 150 lbs. Following the personal information in the same handwriting reads, “LAST SEEN AT XAVIER’S IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, ON MAY 22ND, 2017.” A phone number, likely Spencer’s, follows at the bottom of the photograph.

“Xavier’s is a mutant hangout Ryan likes to visit sometimes. He doesn’t go often because they don’t let me in,” Spencer explains. “When he didn’t come back on the 22nd, I went to see what happened to him. Someone had apparently come in while only Ryan and a worker we know, Jon, was there, but eventually she left. A while later, Ryan told Jon he was heading back to our place, but he never made it back. If Jon hadn’t been there, I never would have known what happened.”

“Why wouldn’t you have known? Why don’t they let you in?” Asks Josh.

“I’m a Skip,” Spencer says, “most mutant spaces don’t let me in. I can’t thank you enough for letting me be  _ here _ today.” The last part is directed at Patrick, who nods to Spencer.

“Wait,” says Brendon, “what’s a Skip?”

Spencer says, “I’m a Skip. Both of my parents are mutants, but I’m not. That’s what “skip” means.”

“It’s called that because sometimes mutant abilities skip a generation,” Mikey adds.

“Yeah, that’s what happened with me and Mikey,” says Gerard, “Elena was a mutant, but mom isn’t. We’re both technically Parshes, though, since dad isn’t from a mutant family.”

“Okay, what’s a Parsh, then,” Tyler asks.

“A Parsh is someone who has a mutant parent and a human parent, a mutant parent and a Skip parent, or a human parent and a Skip parent,” explains Pete.

“And before someone asks,” says Patrick, “a person whose two parents are both mutants is called a Heredit. A Heredit can be a Skip or a mutant. A mutant born to two human parents and who has no prior family history of mutation is called an Ace.”

This could very well escalate into a bigger conversation, but between Patrick and Spencer they manage to get it back on topic.

“I’m just glad someone’s willing to help at all,” says Spencer, at the end of the discussion. “None of the human authorities have been taking me seriously, and because I’m a Skip, not many mutant spaces want me around.”

“We’ll do what we can to help, Spencer,” promises Dallon, and he gets several nods of agreement. By now, everyone is mostly gathering themselves up from their seats around the table.

“Thank you so much, again,” says Spencer. He offers a few more thank you’s before he finally leaves DCD2 a few minutes later.

* * *

For a few days following Spencer’s visit to DCD2, more kidnappings get reported from various mutant hangouts. Two people go missing in Colorado, one from Kansas, and three in Illinois. Everything happens within ten days, before it goes eerily quiet, and many mutants are set on edge. Different havens and hangouts in the same network begin communicating very closely, DCD2 included; they have the most communication with designation 1755, whose newest resident was eager to learn about her friends from VI0IV.

Josh goes to Columbus about a week before his birthday, to see his parents because he doesn’t know if he’ll make it home on the actual day of. They have supper and talk about the current mutant situation, like President Trump’s failing attempts to pass anti-mutant bills into law, before Mikey comes to pick Josh up. He gets sent home with a new box of dark blue hair dye, an early birthday gift from his mom.

It’s still afternoon in LA when Josh gets back, so he goes upstairs right away, aiming for Tyler’s room with intent to ask for help with his hair, currently an ugly and faded yellow, roots visible for nearly an inch at the top. The eyes that meet Josh’s when the door opens aren’t Tyler’s, though.

Josh and Blurry have met a few times face to face since the first incident, but not often. Tyler is still hesitant on the subject, and since Blurry follows Tyler’s whims most of the time, he’d sometimes stay hidden while he was in charge.

Today, though, it seems that Tyler is okay with Josh seeing Blurry, or else he wouldn’t have even opened the door.

Blurry gives Josh a questioning look when he holds up the box of hair dye.

“Look what I got,” Josh says. Blurry blinks at him.

“It’s… blue dye?” Says Blurry.

“Yeah,” answers Josh, “wanna help me dye my hair?”

Blurry looks at Josh uncertainly.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait for Tyler to help you, instead?” Blurry asks. Josh shakes his head.

“It’s not too hard to dye hair. Besides, I can do a lot of it myself, I just need someone to make sure I don’t miss any spots or mess up.” Josh explains.

Blurry still seems uncertain, but after a few moments, agrees. Josh sits them down in front of a mirror in the nearest bathroom, and sets to work bleaching his hair. Blurry watches while Josh explains, and answers any questions Blurry asks to the best of his abilities. Josh also gets Blurry’s help to bleach a bit of hair at the back, coaxing Blurry into gloves when he reaches for the bleach bare-handed.

After Josh has washed the bleach out and dried his hair completely, he talks Blurry through the dying process and then he helps Blurry seal his hair into some tin foil so it won’t stain anything else. Then, he sets his timer and waits.

“Why do you do that,” asks Blurry, as the timer still reads just over fifteen minutes.

“Do what?”

“Dye your hair crazy colours?”

If this was anyone else, it might be rude or condescending, but it was Blurry, and it was entirely innocent and curious. Josh didn’t mind answering.

“I mean, why not dye my hair? It looks really cool, so.” Josh says. Blurry nods.

“Fair enough.”

When the timer on Josh’s phone goes off, he gets into the shower and washes the dye out of his hair, before drying off and changing. His hair leaves deep blue stains on his towel, but better his than someone else’s. It was already stained several other colours as well to begin with.

Blurry is already locked back in Tyler’s room, and it’s pretty late now that everything’s said and done, so Josh heads straight back to his own room, laying down when he enters. He doesn’t actively try to sleep, but doesn’t fight it either, and eventually drifts off, the blue of his still partly damp hair mixing with the blue of his pillowcase.

* * *

Josh wakes up somewhere between 4:30 and 5AM to Tyler sitting at his desk, strumming idly at his ukulele. It sounds a bit like he might be playing “Hallelujah,” but it seems to be more from muscle memory than anything else. There’s a heavy, emotional look on Tyler’s face. He’s staring at a point somewhere in front of him on the wall, eyes unfocused.

“Are you okay, Tyler?” Asks Josh, voice scratchy. His throat is dry, and he clears it, trying to relieve the feeling.

Tyler remains silent, and Josh supposes he isn’t going to talk, but just as Josh is about to give up, Tyler moves.

He lowers his gaze from the wall and over to Josh, eyes sad. There’s a story buried there, and Josh wonders if it’s the one he’s about to hear.

“I’m a twin,” says Tyler.

“You’re a twin,” asks Josh.

“I’m a twin, says Tyler again. “I had a twin.”

“ _‘Had’_?”

“He died.” Tyler’s since put down the ukulele, and is manipulating something small in his hand. Josh can see it’s some kind of image, dark against the semi-transparent blue plastic, but he doesn’t know what it is.

“I think  _ I _  killed him.”

Josh’s jaw drops.

“Tyler-”

“No, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? He’s dead, Josh. I’m here and he isn’t. Blurry ties into it, too. He’s punishment. My brother’s dead and I’ve got an entity in my head who tells me things and manifest with his marks. I killed him, Josh. I strangled him with his own umbilical cord.”

Tyler is crying now, ugly and dirty and loud, echoing across Josh’s room. He clutches tighter to the thing in his hand.

“Tyler, you didn’t kill your brother.”

“Yes, I did, Josh! I know I did!”

“Tyler, you can’t know that…”

“But I do! I’ve seen it happen. Night after night after night. I strangle him, and he doesn’t try to stop me, and he dies.”

“Is that what you see? Is that your nightmare?” Tyler nods. “And what about Blurry? What does he do about the nightmares?”

Tyler sniffles, thinks about it. “He gets shaken up too. As bad as me, sometimes worse. He cries and screams and he apologizes. If I’m really bad, he takes over for me.”

“Tyler, I need you to listen to me for the next five minutes, okay?  _ You didn’t kill your brother _ . The odds of you actually having been able to are so small, they’re just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. Besides, those kinds of things just happen. No one knows why, but they do.”

Tyler shakes his head, eyes still wet. “But Blurry-”

“Blurry might not be a punishment, Tyler. We don’t know what he is. Hell, Blurry himself doesn’t know what he is. He could be anything. A lost soul, a symptom of something, he could even be your twin for all we know!”

* * *

Josh Ramsay turns 32 years old in his father’s spare bedroom in Vancouver, among bandaged ribs and fading bruises. He can hear the clattering of breakfast being made just down the hall, and Bennie’s clicking footsteps approaching. She appears at the open door, snake toy in mouth, dragging across Anemone’s relaxed body in the doorway.

“Hey, Ben,” Josh greets her. She plops down onto Anemone, who shoots up and rushes off, presumably to go bother Tux. Josh slowly but surely manages to get up himself, stepping around the dog in his path and going into the kitchen for food.

Josh forgoes the bacon his father left in favour of an omelet, and sits down at the table. As he’s finishing, his father comes back, leading Sara along with him. She sits down to Josh’s left at the table, in the spot his mother should be occupying.

“Happy birthday, baby brother,” says Sara. She sets a card down in front of Josh, which he knows will include a blank check good for one (1) guitar. Still, Josh goes through the motions, opens the envelope, and there’s the check, with “for the purchase of a guitar” written on the memo line.

“Thanks,” says Josh halfheartedly. Sara gives him a tight-lipped smile.

“I’ll go with you, buy you a second one. To replace the one…”

She doesn’t say it, but she doesn’t have to. Being beaten with his own guitar, among other things, was not something Josh wanted to have to admit to. He’s still a bit bummed about losing it, though. Darla had given him that guitar, and-

_ Fuck Darla. What a bitch. _

It wasn’t anything to do with Darla Taylor why he was so fond of that guitar to begin with. He’d have gotten it for himself if she hadn’t given it to him last year as a gift, she just saved him a few hundred bucks which he still lost anyway, ultimately.

Now, though, there’s a Fender-shaped bruise on his chest and four broken ribs to match. In the ruins of VI0IV was a shattered and broken ‘58 Jazzmaster, one that had seen a lot of love, and survived Hurricane Katrina, and been rescued and exchanged and ignored for a decade before Josh finally got his hands on it, fixed it up, brought a vintage beauty back to life.

Josh is taken out of his revery by Sara’s hand resting gently on his shoulder.

“Hey,” she says, “go get dressed. We can walk Bennie and then I’ll take you to see Mom.”

Josh will never say no to the chance to see his mother. On the contrary, he’ll say no to any attempts to get him away from his mother, including and not limited to being relocated to DCD2. Alas, though, Josh has no choice. It’s by Corlynn’s own wishes that Josh remain in a haven instead of among his human friends and family. She always did want the best for her children.

When Josh sees his mother, she looks at him with recognition, and she hums along when he sings to her. He’s holding up most of her weight, and she’s shaky as he dances slowly with her, never straying her too far from her wheelchair. When Josh kisses her cheeks, she smiles up at him, her eyes and her expression forming the words aphasia has taken from her months ago.

In this moment, dancing with his mother while his sister records it, Josh wishes he could hide himself and stay here.

* * *

When the shrill message tone startles Gerard out of his zone, he nearly drops his drawing tablet from the unexpectedness of the sound. He manages to keep his grip long enough to set the tablet down, though, and slides his chair over to the other end of the desk where his phone lays.

Unfortunately, the message isn’t from Ray, and Gerard allows himself a moment to frown. He drops the frown when he sees what the notification is, however.

**_motorbaby sent you a message: hey, Mr. Way,,, sorry to bother you but,..._ **

Curious, Gerard swipes the message to open up his inbox and read the whole message.

**motorbaby:**

    hey, Mr. Way,,, sorry to bother you but,,,, ive been reading danger days,,,,, and i love it…

This isn’t the first time someone has sent Gerard a message on Tumblr. He gets a lot, and quite a few asks, too. He keeps meaning to change his message settings so that he can only get messages from people he follows. While he makes a point to answer all his asks, though, he rarely answers messages. He supposes he can make an exception for once, though.

**official-gerardway**

    you know you can just call me Gerard, right?

    also, thanks for reading the comic, glad you like it!

A few moments later, there’s another ping from motorbaby.

**motorbaby**

    Okay, yes, cool, hi gerard, awesome, hello.

    I’m awkward.

**official-gerardway**

    hi awkward, so am i :-)

If motorbaby sends him anything else after that, Gerard misses it, because Mikey pops into the room, Frank in tow.

“Ready to go?” Asks Mikey. Gerard nods, and turns off his computer, pocketing his phone.

“Yeah. Got the okay from Patrick?”

“He said we’re good, as long as we stay safe,” says Frank. 

“Alright then,” says Mikey, “let’s go.”

Standing, Gerard grabs ahold of Frank’s hand, and as he blinks, he feels the familiar vertigo that comes from teleporting, before he feels the change of environment.

Flowers and stuffed bears are not what Gerard expected to see on Ray’s front porch, but there they are, along with pictures of Ray’s wife and son. The door is ajar, and one of the windows is shattered clean out of it’s frame.

The atmosphere around the house is dead quiet and unnerving. It goes without saying that something happened here recently, but Gerard, Mikey, and Frank have no way of knowing what or when. It’s not hard to find out the  _ who _ , but one person is still seemingly unaccounted for.

“Mikey,” Gerard says, grabbing hold of Mikey and Frank, “take us home.”

“But Gee, we-” begins Mikey, but Gerard cuts him off, lips tight.

“ _ Home _ , Mikes.”

Mikey nods, and teleports the three of them away from Ray’s empty house.

“MOM!” Yells Gerard, as soon as the shakiness passes. “Mom!”

Donna Way rushes into the room like her house is aflame, and catches sight of the three men in the doorway. Her expression relaxes, but only a fraction.

“Boys, Frank! What’s going on?” Asks Donna.

“We were just at Ray’s,” Gerard begins, and Mikey continues for him.

“What happened to Christa and Nathan? Where’s Ray?” Asks Mikey.

Donna ducks her head for a moment, looks away, looks back. There’s something she doesn’t want to say, some news she doesn’t want to be the bearer of. She isn’t getting out of this, though, so she comes out and says it.

“No one’s heard from Ray since late Wednesday night, and Christa had called friends and family to ask, but no one knew what had happened to him. On Thursday morning, a neighbour called the polices to report a break-in at the Toro’s. Christa and Nathan were found dead.”

If Gerard hadn’t still been holding onto Frank from earlier, his knees would probably give out. Mikey’s do, and he drops onto his ass, a mess of long limbs and wide eyes in the Way’s front entrance. Frank is almost taken down with Mikey.

“Do the police have any idea who did it?” Croaks Frank when he regains his balance. Donna shakes her head.

“If they do, they haven’t told anyone.”

Still on the floor, Mikey curls up on himself a bit. “Gee? Frank? You don't think Ray-”

“No,” Gerard cuts him off. “ _Don’t_ , Mikes.”

None of them really want to hear how Mikey’s question could possibly end.

* * *

Between Tux trying his very hardest to lay on his chest and Sara skirting around him like he’s made of glass, Josh is not having the best of days.

“Can you not, bud?” He says, pushing Tux away,  _ again _ . Why he’s being so insistent, Josh doesn’t know, but he’s being too much of a cat right now for Josh’s still-healing ribs.

“Just leave him be, Josh,” calls Sara from the next room over. Josh sighs.

“I’ll leave him be when he leaves me be, but right now Tux is trying very hard to sit on my chest, which isn’t exactly good for me if I wanna, y’know,  _ breathe _ . ”

Sara, whether she knows it or not, repeats Josh’s sigh as she walks into the room, a mug of tea in each hand. She hands one over to Josh.

“You’re still letting Darla get to you,” Sara observes. Josh grimaces.

“So what if I am?”

“Josh, it’s been a month. Can’t you just, try and move on?”

“Oh, that’s rich. Move on, yeah. And Mom isn’t slowly losing all memory of the people who love her while also losing control of her own body and slowly dying.”

It’s a low blow, and he hits himself with it too. Sara looks like she’s seriously considering re-breaking several of his ribs.

“Joshua Ramsay, watch your sass if you know what’s good for you.” Sara bites out. Josh shakes his head, pushing Tux away  _ again, fucking-. _

“No, Sara, I won’t. Two years, I knew Darla. We were together almost eighteen months, engaged for three. I thought she was the love of my fucking life! Let it go, you say. Move on, you say. It’s not exactly that easy!”

“Maybe so, but you must have noticed something.  _ Something! _ The way she looked at you or at the guys, the way she talked, anything. If it looks like a duck, and all that.”

“Yeah, well, they do say love is blind. Apparently it also makes me the world’s biggest moron and I don’t know anything until it’s standing in front of me as a villainous stereotype ordering literal henchmen to hurt me.”

The silence that follows those words is too deep, too heavy. Josh shakes his head.

“I just, I feel like she never told me anything but I heard everything anyway. For all I know, her real name isn’t even Darla Taylor and I’m just the gullible jackass who fell for it.” Sara grabs Josh’s hand as he speaks, eyes going softer and slightly worried.

“Josh, you’re not…” Sara begins. Josh shakes his head.

“I’m not relapsing, no. I’m not going to get back into the habit or get hooked again. I just need time, that’s all.”

“You’ve had a month, Josh.”

“And a month doesn’t really cut it, Sara. I’ve lost my fiancée, my home, and my way of life. I’m about to be sent off, away from everything I’ve ever known and ever loved, away from my  _ mother _ , and I just. It’s too much, and it’s all at once. I don’t wanna go.”

“It’s not the end, though,” says Sara. “You know it isn’t. Mike said he’d take you to come visit me and Ange and Dad and Mom and everyone whenever you liked, even every day if they let you. You’ll have Bennie and the guys with you, too. It’s not you against the world.”

Josh sighs. “It feels like it is, though. And I know it’s not just me, that it’s Ian and Matt and Mike too, and hell, Carly and Shawn and even Chad. But it feels like the world is moving too fast and I’m the only one who can’t catch up. I’m not ready for this. I don’t know if I ever will be, but I don’t have a choice.”

Sara links her fingers with Josh’s, and strokes her thumb across the back of his hand.

“It hurts, and I want you to stay, but it’s going to be alright. This is for the best, Josh,” Sara tells him. She doesn’t sound like she even believes herself.

_ It’s for the best,  _ Josh thinks to himself. He closes his eyes for a moment and sees his mother, before he met Darla, before she got sick, before everything. He sees the young Corlynn Hanney, the young Ace on a brightly lit stage being handed a final notice, being left with few options and fewer choices. The opportunities she never got, the same ones that Josh himself had long since wasted.

_ It’s for the best _ .

* * *

9: These Open Doors (Were Open Ended)  


* * *

 

The first sign of the arrival of the VI0IV transfers to DCD2 are footsteps; two sets of them, heading straight for the living room where everyone except Brendon is waiting.

The first being to come through the door is a dog, a full-grown black lab with a pink collar and wide eyes. The dog is immediately followed by a very excited, very childlike Brendon Urie, screaming out, “puppy!” despite the dog’s obviously grown state. For a moment it almost seems Brendon is harassing the poor animal before it turns tail and jumps onto him, taking him down in friendly sniffles and licks. A tall, bleach blond bursts into the room a moment later, weighed down by a backpack and small suitcase.

“Ben,” he says, “get off him!”

Brendon, for his part, does not seemingly want the dog to get off of him, and is doing everything in his power to persuade the animal to continue on, petting and cooing and smiling like a fool. Dallon chuckles at the sight.

Three more unfamiliar men come in soon after the first, all about the same height and none quite as tall as the blond. One of the men has shoulder-length brown hair, parted off to the right, and some stubble on his cheeks. Another has a bit of a mohawk, with the hair at the top of his head styled straight up. The final man in the group has long curly hair, and sideburns that merge seamlessly with his neatly trimmed beard.

The blond continues to try to get the dog away from Brendon, who by now is sitting up and still petting the thing. Eventually, the blond gets the dog away, scolding them through his laughter at the dog’s sad eyes.

“Knock it off, Bennie, you know better,” he tells the dog. It dramatically turns it’s head away from him. “Such a drama queen,” he sighs.

“Leave her be, Josh,” says the curly-haired man. The blond, Josh, it seems, shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything. By now, Brendon has gone back to petting the dog. Frank is inching closer as subtly as he can manage.

Seemingly only now remembering everyone else, the four newcomers turn to the larger group, settled around the living room at random. For a moment, no one is sure how to go about introductions.

“We could go around in a circle? Say names and powers?” Pete suggests. He’s nestled on one of the couches with Bronx next to him and Patrick on his other side. Andy and Joe are on the other end.

“Alright, I guess. I’m Mike, Ayley. My mutations is teleportation.” This from the man with the mohawk. Next, the curly haired man.

“Ian Casselman,” he waves. “Invisibility.”

“Matt Webb,” the brunet with long hair, “time manipulation.”

“Josh Ramsay, generally screeching.” The blond. He gestures to the dog at his feet, still distracted by Brendon and Frank. “This little lady here is Bennieandthejets.”

“Brendon Urie,” Brendon says, looking up. “Chaos magic.”

“Frank Iero, plant manipulation.” Frank has resumed his nearby spot next to the Way brothers.

“Gerard Way, intangibility.” Gerard says, fingers locking with Frank’s. Frank bumps his shoulder.

“Mikey Way, I’m Gerard’s brother. My mutation is teleportation, too.” Mike steps forward to offer Mikey a fistbump, which Mikey returns.

Dallon nods. “Dallon Weekes. Elasticity.”

From the couch, Pete puts an arm around Patrick and Bronx. Patrick speaks first.

“I’m Patrick Stump, my mutations are vocal mimicry and vocal manipulation. I’ve spoken with one of you before, Matt, was it?” Matt nods at Patrick’s question. Pete speaks up next.

“Pete Wentz, super speed. I’m Patrick’s fiancé. This little changeling here is my son, Bronx.”

Next is Joe. “Joe. Trohman. My power is making people feel high.”

Andy rolls his eyes. “He’s joking, his powers are actually emotional manipulation. I’m Andy Hurley, healer.”

And then there were two.

“Tyler Joseph. Electricity and stuff.”

Finality. “My name’s Josh Dun. I’m pyrokinetic.”

After everything regarding introductions is settled, the new arrivals are led up to their rooms by Patrick, Pete, Dallon, and Andy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> VI0IV is pronounced six-oh-four, and consists of the roman numerals for six, the number zero, and the roman numerals for four. It comes from the 604 Records logo which can be found on all of Marianas Trench's CDs.


	9. IMPORTANT NOTICE

Hello. It's been a while. I didn't mean for it to take so long.

I promise it wasn't my intention to leave everyone hanging. As an apology, I've posted everything I had pre-written, so chapters seven and eight, and the first section of nine. That means that every single word from my Google Docs file about this fic has been posted. There's nothing left you haven't seen.

I stopped writing by accident. Most of this fic was written between classes at school, in a little room way out of the way that my friends and I hang out in. It has an elevator and some light, but prior to last June, had no electrical outlets within it. We had an extension cord and a power bar which we relied on to charge our laptops and to plug in the TV and video game consoles for when we have our video game club. In May, the fire marshal visited the school and told the janitor to remove our door stopper, extension cord, and power bar, leaving the room without circulating air or electricity. Following the removal of our power source, my laptop stopped accepting the school's wifi connection and still refuses to connect to it. Even now that we have had outlets installed in our room, I can't write on Google Docs with the laptop I use.

Since I was writing so much in school, the inability to do so basically halted my writing altogether. I haven't written for this fic at all since 16 June. Even now, I don't know where to resume from where I left off, but I don't want to start rewriting that first section of chapter nine.

I'm not even sure I want to finish chapter nine at all. Looking back at everything I've written, it feels wrong. It's too dragged out and campy, not at all like I had planned it out.

This story will be reordered to be the second in the series it's named for, and I'll see what I can do about everything. I still have my outlines and notes regarding this fic and a bit of an idea where I want to go, how I want to get there.

So yes, I'm going to try rewriting this. "Rewriting" in a loose sense. Some things will change, but there a few sections I want to keep in the new version, including Pete's proposal to Patrick, Josh Dun's introduction, and most (if not all) of Josh Ramsay's interludes. Other things will change. "Darla's" introduction will hopefully happen faster, the plot won't be as dragged out. I'll also explore the characters more, as individuals with pasts and histories and personalities and struggles and goals. No word yet on when that will be ready, but since the first chapter may stay the same or very similar, you might have the beginning of it quite fast. Don't quote me on that, though.

Until I can get something up for you, thank you so much for sticking with me through everything so far and for believing in this fic. Here's to hoping the newer version is better.

Yours, Acadjonne.


End file.
